


Quonset

by LogicGunn



Series: The Long Dark [9]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Long Dark (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Long Dark Fusion, Angst, Fluff, John's POV, M/M, Post-Apocalyptic, Survival, looting, supplies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:20:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogicGunn/pseuds/LogicGunn
Summary: It’s high summer, or at least what passes for high summer this far North.
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Series: The Long Dark [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583821
Comments: 51
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is finished, I'm just editing it chapter by chapter and posting as they're done. 
> 
> Content Warnings at the end if you need it.

It’s high summer, or at least what passes for high summer this far North. It’s not exactly warm what with the year-round snow, but the increase in temperature is palpable and makes life a little more comfortable. The weather is stable and predictable at least; clear blue skies and sunshine, gentle breezes and long days. Having struggled to survive through their first polar night, they’re using most of each day preparing for the next. It’s slow, honest work, innately physical but also surprisingly intellectual. They’ve spent the past couple of months sawing and chopping as they build up stacks of firewood to dry out in time for winter. John enjoys it, he’s always been a physical being and has spent his life relishing in a routine of training and combat. He knows it’s a struggle for Rodney to keep up though; manual labour isn’t one of his virtues and he’s always eschewed it in favour of more cerebral pursuits. But whenever John asks him for scientific guidance _(“W_ _hat’s the optimum shape and size for a pile of logs to dry out?” “A five-foot-high beehive, obviously...”),_ he approaches the task at hand primarily as a mental puzzle to solve with a side serving of sweat, rolling up his sleeves and taking his fair share of turns with the axe. Between them they’ve already stacked up enough piles of firewood to keep them warm for the whole of next winter and then some, and with a comfortable buffer in hand, John’s thoughts turn to other, less pressing matters, like the old map of Great Bear Island on the wall of the cabin. 

“Are you still looking at that thing?” asks Rodney as he passes, Miska’s empty bowl in hand. 

“Mmmm,” says John, following the route of the train tracks with his finger. They walked them to Carter Dam a couple of days after they crash-landed, but the tracks go a lot further than that, passing through a ravine and all the way to the coast on the south side of Cinder Hill mountain. “What would you say to a little trip?” 

Rodney comes over to the map, having dumped the bowl in the wash-basin. “Another one?” he asks, and sure, they only a couple of months ago returned from Thomson’s Crossing, but that trip was a roaring success (bullet wound notwithstanding). 

“Yeah. There’s a small township called Quonset out east. We could take the sleds, grab some supplies.” 

“As much as I appreciate having coffee again, and would like to extend it even longer, are you really up for another supply run? You’ve only just finished healing from that wolf attack, and it looks to be further than Thomson’s Crossing.” 

“It’s only a little further, but this time we can follow the train tracks to get there. No mountainous slopes to climb or deep ditches to get stuck in. It could be fun.” 

“Fun,” says Rodney sceptically, as he heads over to the washbasin and starts to scrub Miska’s bowl. “I suppose the weather should hold-” 

“It _is_ summer, Rodney.” 

“-and more coffee can only be a good thing.” 

“That’s the spirit.” 

“What do you think, Miska?” asks Rodney as he dries his hands and bends to scratch behind her ears. “Want to take a trip to the seaside?” 

Miska’s tail thumps the ground as she tilts her head into Rodney’s ministrations. John takes that as a yes. 

*** 

They don’t go the next day or the next; Rodney twists his ankle tripping up over a wayward axe, and while he insists that he’s fine, John’s not taking any chances with his health. He wraps the offending foot tightly in strips of cloth and makes sure that Rodney keeps it elevated and packed up with ice while he stacks up the last of the chopped wood. Miska splits her time between the two of them, wanting to be outside having fun with John but getting anxious whenever Rodney isn’t in sight for too long, whining at the back door until John or Rodney relents and lets her back in for a time (the latter getting a telling off from the former for weight-bearing on his bad leg). John knows he’s being over cautious with the sprain, and that it’s making Miska feel a little jittery too, but he can’t help it. Rodney’s important, as vital as oxygen, and the thought that something bad might happen to him scares the life out of John. He’s changed since the crash; there was a time he’d rush headfirst into danger and screw the consequences, but these days he’s all about caution and safety. It’s his fault that Rodney tripped, he left that damn axe there on the ground, and sure, it’s only a twisted ankle, but what if it had been a broken leg? A compound fracture out here could be a death sentence – was, for Miska’s previous owner. 

He takes an armful of old firewood into the cabin and dumps it unceremoniously by the stove. Rodney looks up from his book – Little Women – and raises an eyebrow at the open door. 

“Are we inviting Negafook in for tea?” he asks. 

John turns from where he’s kicking the logs haphazardly under the stove. “Negafook?” 

“Inuit god of the North Wind,” says Rodney, waving a hand. “Something my aunt Bey used to say.” 

“When you left the door open?” 

Rodney drops his book on the floor. “Oh God! I’m turning into my aunt.” 

“Better her than one of your parents.” 

“This is true.” 

“Here.” John grabs the book off the floor and reaches out to give it back. Rodney takes it and ducks his head, searching for his page with a smile. John shuts the door with his hip as he removes his gloves and jacket, then peeks over Rodney’s shoulder and reads where he is in the story. 

“You’re hovering,” mumbles Rodney. 

“So I am,” says John, moving back to the stove to top it up. “Jo’s my favourite character.” 

“I like Beth,” says Rodney decisively, as though there can be no argument over who’s the greatest sister. 

“Oh,” says John before he can stop himself. 

“What do you mean ‘oh’?” says Rodney. “What’s wrong with Beth?” 

“Nothing’s wrong with Beth,” says John quickly. “She’s a great character.” 

“If you don’t- Oh my god, what happens? Something happens, doesn’t it? Oh no-” 

“Rodney-” 

“Tell me,” insists Rodney, looking genuinely distressed. 

“I don’t want to spoil the book,” says John, trying to think of some way to fix this. 

“You already spoiled it with your ‘oh’. That horse has bolted. Tell me what happens to Beth?” 

“She, uh...are you sure you want to know?” 

Rodney’s knuckles are white with the strain of gripping the book. “I can’t take that kind of suspense,” he says. 

“She gets scarlet fever.” 

“Oh God, there’s no vaccine for that!” 

“No, there isn’t.” John feels like an absolute bastard admitting that, like he’s taken Rodney’s joy and stomped on it right in front of him. Rodney closes the book with a thud, stands up and hobbles over to the make-shift bookshelf, replacing Little Women in its slot and picking up Anna Karenina instead. 

“Um...” says John, knowing that if Beth’s illness is an issue, then Anna’s suicide might also be too much for Rodney to handle. 

“Oh God, what’s wrong with this one?!” 

“Just don’t get too attached to Anna.” 

Rodney sighs and puts the book back. His hand hovers over the rest of the bookshelf, but John knows he's already read them all and he watches them get dismissed one by one. Rodney sits back down bookless. “We should have taken Fifty Shades after all,” he says after a beat, and John snorts out a laugh. 

“I’d say I’d go back and get it, but I don’t think I want you to get any ideas...” 

“Yes, because I’m such an extreme porn star personality.” 

“I think you’re great, buddy,” says John, and he can feel his cheeks heat up as he says it. 

Rodney looks surprised and, Jesus, kind of hopeful. “You do?” he says. 

“Yeah...I mean...it’s good, we’re good together." 

“I think so too.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

John pokes at the fire a little more, just to give his hands something to do. Rodney’s biting his lip when he finally stands and faces him, and it’s all John can do not to push him to the ground and ravish him right there on the wooden floor. “Hey, uh, you wanna?” he says at last, toeing his boots off and kicking them to the door. 

“God, yes,” says Rodney, and John helps him upstairs, strips them both, and puts his mind to showing Rodney just how good they really are together. 

*** 

“Did you know that Fifty Shades started off as a fan-fiction?” says John later, much later, when they’re lying entwined from shoulder to hip to calf. 

“I read something about that in the Toronto Star,” admits Rodney and he presses his lips to John’s bicep. 

“You ever read any?” 

Rodney lifts his head up. “Fanfiction?” 

“Yeah,” says John, dragging his lips across Rodney’s jaw. 

“No, but not because I had a particular notion against it. I just never really had much time for recreational reading. 

“Until now.” 

“Until now,” agrees Rodney. He lowers his head back down onto the pillow. “I can’t believe Beth dies," he says mournfully. 

“I’m sorry, buddy.” 

“Me too.” 

“There’ll be more books in Quonset,” says John. “We can stock up.” 

“Can we go tomorrow?” 

“Not on that ankle. Couple more days, at least.” 

*** 

A 'couple more days' turns into a week when Miska comes down with some kind of a stomach upset _(“Oh God...John! Something’s wrong with Miska!” “Poor baby, you eat something you shouldn’t have?” “Oh, that’s just gross.”),_ but finally they’re heading out with almost-empty backpacks and barren sleds in tow. Miska gets over-excited at the sight of John and Rodney putting on their travel gear and spins around and around outside until she stumbles over her paws and tumbles head-first into the snow. She comes back up and shakes it off in a miniature, dog-sized blizzard, then bounds off ahead of them up the train tracks. 

“See? Told you she’d be fine.” 

“I’m sorry, was there much call for veterinary medicine at the Air Force Academy?” 

“No, but I was stationed in Lackland for a while, spent a lot of time with the K-9 handlers.” 

“There are K-9 units in Texas?” 

“Most of them train there, yeah.” 

“Huh.” 

It’s easy going under the summer sun; the snowy ground is smooth and even and the sleds glide over freely. They pass the derailed train and its burned-out engine, frosted windows glinting in the sunlight and carriage ransacked – thoroughly plundered by the two of them over a couple of days in the spring when the snow was falling soft and silent, and Rodney’d set his mind to salvage. The only useful things that it had given them was a stack of crossword books (in English and French), an Inuktitut/English dictionary, several pairs of clean socks, and an abundance of old newspapers, whose sudoku pages Rodney cut out for John while the rest got relegated to fire-lighting duty. The children’s toys and the vast majority of the contents of people’s luggage were left where they were since neither of them figured they’d look good in a dress and the rest wasn’t in their size. 

Miska sniffed out a slab of hash hidden in a tin between a seat cushion and the window of a cabin which Rodney initially baulked at, but when John listed the medicinal uses of cannabis he stowed it away in his backpack as a plausible muscle relaxant. It found its home in the first-aid cupboard among the opioids and the antibiotics, but neither of them has brought it up since, nor have they needed it, though John knows it makes Rodney a little uncomfortable knowing that it’s there. He still thinks they’re going to be ratted out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – “By who? The crows?” “I really don’t want that kind of reputation.” – but John doesn’t tease too much because he knows that what Rodney’s really afraid of is being trialled for murder, even though it was 100% self-defence. He also doesn’t bring up the fact that the chances of them ever being a part of a civilised society again are astronomically low, because Rodney still holds on to the hope of seeing his sister, niece and aunt in the future (even though he’s the one who claimed that getting off the island is impossible without the use of modern technology as it’s far too far away from mainland Canada for a rowboat or any kind of sailboat that they could feasibly come up with). 

It’s a good ten kilometres from the Cabin to Carter Dam, but they make quick time this time around on account of Rodney not having a leg wound, coming up on the bridge across the river when the sun is high in the sky. 

“I can’t believe they named the dam after her,” grumbles Rodney as they cross the bridge. 

“It’s funny how quickly nature can dominate over a man-made structure,” says John, hefting his rifle in his arms. The dam is built into the cliffside, huge and imposing and even more derelict than the last time they came. 

“Never bet against nature,” says Rodney. “The laws of physics can be bent, but they’ll always snap back and bite you in the ass.” 

“That’s one way to put it.” 

“I take back everything good I ever said about Carter. She’s smart but only just enough to be apocalyptically dangerous.” 

“I’m sure it was a team effort, buddy.” 

“Yeah, a team she handpicked. If she wasn’t so dumb, she’d have picked me.” 

John believes this all the way to his bones, that getting Rodney to Thule would have made a difference, maybe even enough to prevent the global event that stranded them here. Certainly O’Neill seemed to think so. He tries not to take their crash as a personal failing, it’s not like he could have done anything differently after all, but it feels like one of many fuck ups he’s committed during his military career. Instead of getting Rodney safely to the airbase, he crash-landed on an abandoned island, stranding them hundreds of kilometres from where they need to be. They’re doing well, all things considered, but even if the rest of the world manages to rebuild no one will think to look for them here. They’re here for the long haul, that much is certain. 

“I see you brooding,” says Rodney, nudging John’s elbow. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Mmmhmm,” says Rodney, sceptically, but he doesn’t pry, and that’s one thing John absolutely loves about him; he knows when to push and when to leave things alone. Not many people in John’s life have been content to let him work through his thoughts on his own, and if he has to be stranded here for the rest of his days, it’s a relief for it to be with Rodney and not Nancy or his father or even Holland, who liked to try to unravel John’s inner monologue on the long, hot days in Kabul, riding the Ferris Wheel at Qargha Lake or back on base eating the slop-de-jour in the mess. He always had a line of scripture ready when John was feeling less than stellar, and while John appreciated the sentiment, he was increasingly atheistic with time, grounding his life and morals in his fellow man rather than anything theological. 

They stop for a break outside the dam, stepping into one of the worker trailers on the other side of the tracks to drink some of Rodney’s flask of coffee out of the glare of the sun. Rodney sits at the kitchen table and John joins him after pouring a bowl of water out for Miska. 

“This is where we got this flask,” says Rodney, taking a long drink from his metal cup. 

“And my gun,” says John as Rodney passes the flask over. They’d picked up a crowbar inside the dam and used it to break into these cabins for supplies. Rodney had found the Lee-Enfield rifle in the back room and given it to John with a big grin on his face. For the first time since they’d crashed, John had felt in control. He smiles to himself as he remembers Rodney’s shooting lessons, the Canadian being unused to handling a firearm and loudly vocalising his moral stance on guns as “a misguided American pastime”. How things have changed; now Rodney takes his turn with the rifle everywhere they go in case of predatory animals or other, more human, dangers. Not that long ago they had another rifle, but they lost it when Rodney took a tumble into a frozen river. Sometimes John wishes they still had it, but he remains grateful that they still have one. They don’t talk much about the events surrounding the acquisition of this particular gun, but though John feels regret over the death of Molly, he’s certain that he did the right thing at the time. What else can an airman do under sniper fire? 

“Let’s get going,” says John, when they empty the flask. “I’d like to cover another ten kilometres before we make camp. 

“I just hope there’s some kind of shelter along the way,” says Rodney. “I’d hate to have to sleep out in the elements.” 

“I’m sure there are five-star accommodations en route for your majesties delicate sensibilities,” teases John, and it earns him a punch to the shoulder. 

*** 

The ravine is narrow, with tall, steep sides reaching up to the sky, and it’s clear it was hollowed out of the mountainside by the track layers. It’s sheltered and shaded at ground level, with only a meter or so clearance either side. If the trains were running it would be unpassable on foot, but then again if the trains were running they wouldn’t need to trek nearly forty kilometres to get from A to B. They keep an easy pace, the route being artificially level makes it effortless to traverse, even with the sleds. Compared with their trek to Thomson’s Crossing this is a walk in the park. John gets a feeling of déjà vu when he spots a deer up ahead, its nose burrowing in the tracks, and it brings to mind another part of another trek when he felt like they were being watched. He still doesn’t know if his gut was on the money or not; that they were being stalked doesn’t mean that particular time they were under a watchful eye. One of them being armed makes all the difference though; he knows that whatever they might face he’d have a reasonable chance of subduing any kind of attack. 

Miska keeps pace beside them, occasionally stopping to sniff the ground and leave her scent on the rocky wall but she always catches up so they don’t feel the need to stop every time she does. There’s nothing for her to explore, no burrows or forested banks or rivers, just never-ending rockfaces and train tracks as far as the eye can see. Being in the middle of the polar summer, there’s no actual sunset or night-time; the sun rises and lowers in the sky, but never truly crosses the horizon. It makes timekeeping almost impossible, other than to say it’s close to mid-day or close to midnight, and it’s sneaking closer to the latter with every step they take. They keep walking until they reach a train tunnel through the mountain, pausing at the entrance. 

“Do you want to stop here?” asks John. 

“Camp inside this tunnel?” asks Rodney. 

“It’s sheltered enough. Unless we get a direct east or west wind, it’ll be comfortable.” 

Rodney shuffles his feet a little bit, quietly fidgeting with the gun. John can tell he wants to say something but is afraid of being ridiculed. It’s a habit that John’s noticed, and despite the fact that he has never, ever made fun of anything Rodney has said, Rodney can’t seem to get over his fear of being mocked. It makes John angry to think that he’s never felt safe enough in any kind of relationship before to speak any and all of his thoughts freely, but it is getting better with time, and John hopes that Rodney’s trust in him will allow him to overrule that kind of fear. 

“Don’t laugh,” says Rodney after a while. 

“I never do,” says John. 

“It’s just that...look, I know it’s ridiculous...and I know there are no trains running any more...but I just...I don’t think I can sleep somewhere that a train could feasibly run me over.” 

“Okay.” 

“Okay?” 

“Yeah. Let’s get through the tunnel and find somewhere to make camp on the other side.” 

Rodney lets out a long, slow breath. “I, uh, yeah. Okay.” 

John can’t help but lean in and kiss Rodney on his cheek, the rifle clacking against their harnesses in the silence of the ravine. 

“Come on then,” he says and sets off through the tunnel, Rodney’s footsteps echoing all around him as he rushes to catch up. When they pass out of the tunnel the ravine opens up, widening on either side as the track splits in two, the left leading to Cinder Hills Coal Mine and the right leading to Quonset according to the map. To the side of the junction stands a tall, thin, brick signal box with a rickety staircase leading up to a peeling wooden door. 

“This do?” asks John. 

“Think it’s safe? It looks kind of run down.” 

“I’ll go check it out.” 

John climbs the steps and pushes open the door to find a cramped cabin, dusty beams of light filtering through the frozen windows and landing on some well-worn furniture, including a single bed and a miniature wood-burning stove. He pivots to take in the cabin. The creaking floor seems sturdy enough despite the age of the place; it must be as old as the tracks themselves. The walls are interlocking brickwork and totally bare, no pictures or paintings or decals, no insulation to speak of. It’s hardly the Burj Al-Arab, but it’s sheltered and solid and has an actual bed, which is nothing to be sniffed at out here. Before John can turn around, Rodney comes pounding up the staircase and into the cabin. 

“Oh!” he says. “A bed!” 

“Yup.” 

Miska pushes her way in between Rodney’s legs and hops on the bed, lying down on her stomach with her tongue poking out of her teeth. 

“I guess that’s that then,” says John, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“This is much better than sleeping out in the snow,” says Rodney as he drops his backpack and kicks it into a corner. “Do we have anything we can use to start a fire?” 

John looks at the pot-belly stove in the corner, eyes the boxes of compressed fuel bricks next to it. This will be the easiest fire he’s ever lit. “I’ve got a newspaper in my pack,” he says, and he drops to the floor in front of the stove, unzipping his backpack and rummaging inside it for the sixteen-month-old National Post. He scrunches a few pages into balls and fills the bottom of the stove with them, then crumbles one of the bricks on top. When he sets a match to the newspaper it catches fire quickly, bright yellow flames licking the inside of the stove and giving off a warm, yellow glow. He packs it with fuel bricks then closes the door, opening the vent to get it to burn fast and dirty and hopefully warm up the place a little. 

Rodney fiddles with the levers on the far wall, shifting them forward and back, watching through the windows where the tracks adjust to his ministrations. John pulls a couple of cans of peaches and meat out of his pack, opens them up and sets them to heat on the stove. They've been hoarding the canned food as much as they can; their diet consists mostly of hunted venison and line caught whitefish and bass, supplemented once a week with something pre-processed and indulgent, but carrying raw meat is liable to attract predators so they brought some non-perishables for the journey. They take it as a safe bet that when they get to Quonset there will be supplies they can use, as there was in Thomson’s Crossing. John’s looking forward to tonight’s peaches; it’s been a while since he had something sweet. 

When Rodney gets bored with the levers, he sits down on the bed to take off his boots and outer jacket. John follows suit, perching on the edge because Miska’s spread out all across the damn thing. Though the sun is still above the horizon the sky is a wash of pinks and coppers, Venus lying low and prominent along with a handful of other bright spots that John assumes to be man-made. He wonders idly if the ISS was affected by the EMP, and feels a little sadness for the people up there – imagines how terrifying it would be to be suddenly cut off 400 kilometres above the Earth with no way to contact mission control or navigate a route home. 

“Are you still moping?” asks Rodney. 

“Nah. I was just thinking about the International Space Station.” 

“Oh, God. That must be awful, to be stranded up there.” 

“Running out of food and CO2 filters. Do you think they’re still alive?” 

Rodney thinks for a minute, his face flickering through several emotions before he speaks. “Well, Sunita Williams was in charge, and she’s not an idiot – I should know, I’ve met her. So with some rationing and clever jury-rigging...they probably died...uh...one-two-three-four months ago. But I’m betting they tried to return to Earth on the lifeboat and without guidance from mission control they’ll have burned up in the atmosphere.” 

“Jesus.” 

“It’s possible they landed, but seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface is ocean and with no one to meet them they’d have been no better off. If, and it’s a big if, they landed on land, somewhere near civilisation, they’d have been fine, but I’d guess that the chance of that is in the low end of single figures. It’s a big job calculating re-entry trajectories. Everything has to be perfect.” 

“Well, on that cheerful note, you hungry?” 

They eat out of the cans with sporks, the canned meat then the peaches, and Rodney drops Miska’s dinner on the floor where she vacuums it up in three whole bites. When she’s done she looks up at him with widened eyes. 

“No, don’t look at me like that, you ungrateful mutt,” he says. “That’s all there is.” 

John snorts a laugh, because Rodney might occasionally talk the talk of the unimpressed, but everything he does for Miska speaks to his adoration of her. He’s the one who wipes away her eye gunk with his bare thumbs, the one who de-ticks her every few days, and the one who lay down on the floor next to her all night when she was unwell. He loves her deeply and it shows. 

“You guys wanna catch some shut-eye?” John asks, standing up to stretch out. 

“Sure,” says Rodney, stifling a yawn. 

They stock up the stove and set it down low, then climb into the single bed, Rodney slotting in behind John, his arms slipping over his waist and his hands sliding underneath the cotton of John’s t-shirt. Miska watches them for a time, then settles down in front of the stove and falls asleep quickly, her familiar, rumbling snores soothing them into slumber as easily as a lullaby.


	2. Chapter 2

John wakes up in a sweltering fever, sandwiched between Rodney, the wall, and fifty pounds of canine, with an overwhelming heat radiating off the glowing embers of the stove. Usually when he wakes  first he likes to spend a little time watching Rodney until he comes to, but he's so uncomfortably hot and sweaty he has to nudge Miska off the bed and clamber over Rodney's sleeping form. Miska waits impatiently for him at the door as he stuffs his feet into his boots, bolting down the stairs the second he steps outside. He crosses the tracks and finds a suitable place downhill to relieve himself, cursing himself for thinking that it was a good idea to come out without a jacket and drenched in sweat. It might not be mid-winter right now but they're still in the arctic and temperatures are still below freezing. He shakes off and zips up, rubbing his hands up and down his arms as he rushes back up the steps and indoors. Miska is playing in the snow, and John watches her through the windows for a while before grabbing last night’s empty cans and taking them outside to fill with powdered snow. He finds a pristine patch on the other side of the tracks, stuffs them till they’re full then heads back indoors to set them on the stove to melt and boil to make potable water. He didn’t tell Rodney, but he brought a couple of days' worth of instant coffee and creamer that he’d been secretly hoarding from the last of the MREs. He’s looking forward to the look on his face when he hands a hot coffee over. 

Rodney, for his part, is fast asleep and breathing softly. In John’s absence, he’s rolled up in the sleeping bags like a burrito, only the fluffy tuft of his hair peeking out the top. There’s something utterly adorable about a slumbering Rodney McKay, his face relaxed and his body loose and unassuming. Awake he’s a bundle of energy and nerves, a juxtaposition of cocksure ego and guileless diffidence all wrapped up in a lopsided smile and expressive hands. In another life he’d be polishing his Nobel and barking at his post-grads, and while John mourns for him that easy life (would give up almost anything to give it back to him), deep down he’s selfishly glad that life brought them together, no matter how tragic the circumstances. When they crashed John had nothing to lose, nothing he left behind to tether him to the old world. Rodney had a vocation, both in education and cutting-edge research, not to mention a family he spent every Christmas with. John had an indifferent ex-wife, a distant father and a career that he sacrificed for a failed rescue mission. Twice. He’s lost nothing and gained so much, but the price was too high for Rodney and John would give it all back in a heartbeat. 

The water comes to the boil rapidly and John grabs the coffee and creamer sachets from his backpack to pour in. The can are too hot to touch so he wraps them both in a clean sock to protect their hands, then stirs them both with a spork and lifts them to carry over to the bed. When he turns around, Rodney is sitting up, watching him. 

“Is that what I think it is?” Rodney asks, a tentative twitch in the corner of his mouth. 

“Yup,” says John, handing one over. 

Rodney takes the offered can and inhales the steam. “Mmmm, coffee. You’ve been holding out on me.” 

“Only a little,” admits John. “For special occasions.” 

“Oh. Is this a special occasion?” 

“It’s two hundred and fifty days since our first kiss.” 

John expects Rodney to smile at that, but instead he looks annoyed. “How the hell do you know that?” he asks. 

“I uh, I just do,” admits John. 

“Should I have known that?!” 

“What? No, Rodney I-” 

“It’s just that...you should know I’m not very good at remembering special occasions. Most of the time I can do Christmas, but that’s only because of the fanfare that everyone else makes about it. I couldn’t even do that now with me not having a calendar. I mean, I think it’s June. It’s June, right?” 

Rodney stops for a moment and John opens his mouth to speak. “It’s July, but-” 

“You see? So if you want me to remember important dates I’ll try, I’ll make a proper calendar when we get home, I have some paper left, I can do that, but you’re going to have to forgive me if I forget because I don’t mean anything by it, I swear, it’s just that there’s always other things that my brain-” 

“Jesus, Rodney,” interrupts John. “It’s not a big deal. I was just trying to make you smile, that’s all. I don’t care about dates or anniversaries or...it was just a thing. Sorry, I guess I blew it.” 

“No, no, I’m sorry, it wasn’t you, it was me.” Rodney’s face falls, and John starts to feel utterly flummoxed. 

“Is there...is there something you want to tell me?” 

“Uh, not really.” 

John blows out a breath. “Look, it’s not a big deal, okay? I only remember because I’m military and I’m trained to keep tabs on what the date is. It’s important when you get orders to be able to coordinate when you’re out in the field for weeks on end. It’s not important right now. At all.” 

“Right,” says Rodney, but he doesn’t seem convinced. 

“Look, has something...did you forget something important some time?” 

“Uh, try all the time. Most people don’t take too kindly to having their birthday forgotten, and that’s before you add in romantic holidays and-” 

“Well, that sounds like the dream to me, so...” 

“When is your birthday? I should have asked months ago.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” says John, and it honestly doesn’t. 

“It’s something I should know,” says Rodney. 

“Nah. It’s just a day. We can celebrate anything any time we want to. There are no rules any more, you know?” 

“Oh. I never thought about it that way.” 

John lifts his coffee pointedly. “So drink up. It’s two hundred and fifty days since we first kissed and to me, that’s worth breaking out the supplies for.” 

Finally,  _ finally, _ Rodney smiles and takes a big draw from the can, relaxing against the wall as he kicks the sleeping bags off his legs. John feels himself relax too, and when Miska scratches at the door, he lets her back in. 

*** 

“So what do you think?” asks John. “Do we follow the tracks to Quonset, or hike down to the road and follow the coast?” 

Rodney peers downhill towards the coast and fiddles with his sled harness. "If I remember correctly, there’s no train station until Quonset itself. If we take the road then at least there might be something to investigate.” 

That sounds good to John. 

They head south, following a rugged track that leads away from the signal box. It banks a frozen river that meanders its way downhill, occasionally halting them at a padlocked gate where they have to lift both the sleds and Miska over the top. 

“This is getting old,” says Rodney as he climbs over the fourth gate then turns to take Miska from John’s aching arms and let her down gently to the ground on the other side. John vaults the gate like an Olympian, and Rodney rolls his eyes. “You’re going to land on your ass if you keep doing that.” 

John grins boyishly because he knows it will wind Rodney up even more. “You’re just jealous.” 

“Of your suicide-risking behaviour?” asks Rodney as he reattaches his sled to his harness. “If you get a fractured coccyx, don’t expect any sympathy. There's solid ice underneath all this snow.” 

He’s got a point, but John vaults the next gate, and the next, just because he can. When the track opens up onto the main road they turn east, skirting the shoreline and keeping a decent pace despite the icy terrain. The view is breath-taking; blue skies and bright sun, choppy ocean as far as they can see, two tree-topped islands out in the middle of the bay. There’s something invigorating about the sounds of the waves lapping the shore and the gulls calling out to each other further out to sea. It’s livelier than they’re used to, being so quiet and still at the cabin, and it brings to John’s mind seaside trips when he was very young before his mother died. 

The ice on the road turns to slush the closer to the sea they get, and as Rodney muses aloud about the effect of salt on the freezing point of water, John spots some buildings in the distance. He grips the rifle a little anxiously, remembering the last time they visited a new place, and he scans his surroundings with military eyes while Rodney rabbits on, oblivious. They come upon a fishing camp around the bend; a row of seasonal huts and a couple of wooden jetties with tethered fishing boats bobbing up and down in the water. In the winter the bay must freeze over, otherwise there would be permanent, winter-proofed lodgings on the site. A single car sits abandoned in the parking bay, an old ford fiesta, all sharp angles and straight lines. The first thing that Rodney does is open the car door and start tinkering under the steering wheel, presumably to hotwire the thing. John reaches over his head and lowers the visor, and a set of keys falls out and bounces off Rodney’s shoulder. 

“Oh,” says Rodney. 

“Always the most difficult path, young Padawan,” says John. 

Rodney grabs the keys off the floor and slides into the driver's seat, grumbling about over-achieving Jedi and the well-meaning Canadian neighbour. As they both expect, nothing happens when he turns the key in the ignition. John’s not bothered, having long ago come to terms with the fact that technology is well and truly dead, but much like the prospect of getting off the island, Rodney holds out hope that they’ll find working tech on one of their trips if only to make things easier for a couple of days. 

“Well,” says Rodney, removing the key and replacing it in the visor. “It was worth a try.” 

“Sure was,” says John, and he squeezes Rodey’s hand through their gloves when Rodney closes the car door. 

They search the cabins methodically, one by one, top to bottom, but the only thing they find is a knitted, cream wool toque with a red maple leaf on the front, long-forgotten on the dusty floor under a bunk bed in the last cabin. 

“Very patriotic,” says John as he pulls it down over Rodney’s ears. 

Rodney smiles and reaches for John, leans up into a kiss, cold-nosed and ruddy-cheeked. “I can be patriotic,” he says. “With the right kind of incentive.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

They’re still looking at each other when there’s a thunk from off the jetty. John rushes to the edge, rifle raised, but it’s only Miska, having jumped into one of the boats, busy sniffing around a box tucked under the engine. John climbs down the ladder and into the boat, boots heavily clunking on the bottom. He nudges Miska aside and pulls out the box to open it. 

“Anything interesting?” asks Rodney. 

“Hold your horses,” says John. He grabs his boot-knife and slides it in the seam to break open the lock. Inside is a set of basic survival gear; a flare gun, some bottled water and chocolate, a grubby torch which doesn’t so much as flicker when he presses the switch. He lifts the box and Rodney takes it from him, peering curiously inside. 

“Oh my god, chocolate.” 

“Stick it in your inner pocket, it’ll warm right up.” 

Rodney’s face lights up in delight at the thought of melting chocolate, and he unzips his jacket as John steps onto the ladder. Halfway up he pauses and looks back down at Miska. 

“How the hell are we going to get you out of there?” he asks. 

“She got herself in there,” says Rodney. “She can get herself out.” 

“Rodney, she can’t clear two meters.” 

“No, but she can swim.” 

John looks down again. Miska doesn’t look like a dog who’s gotten into an impossible situation, but still... 

“How about a compromise. We’ll pull the boat to shore.” 

Rodney rolls his eyes as he zips up his jacket, but untethers the boat from its mooring and helps John pull it up the jetty and beach it on the shore. Miska jumps out, casual as you please, and doesn’t so much as look at them as she saunters up the shore and onto the snowy bank. John and Rodney moor the boat again, so it doesn’t drift away at high tide, and follow Miska back to the road where Rodney ties the box to his sled and they set off again. It’s harder to drag the sleds when the ground is wet and mushy, but they persevere, pushing on around the bay, mood cheerful and pace steady. They don’t stop until they happen upon a log sorting plant on the shoreline, two workers’ trailers and several log stores filled with processed timber. 

“Do you think this is where the logs from the logging camp end up?” asks Rodney. 

“Must be,” says John. 

“So they’re transported by train to Quonset, then by truck to here to be processed?” 

“What gave it away? Was it the massive truck in the parking lot?” 

“Oh, har de har har. It just seems inefficient. Why not have the sorting plant on the rail line?” 

“No idea. Let’s find a local and ask them.” 

Rodney mumbles something that John doesn’t catch. “What’s that?” he asks. 

“I hope we don’t bump into any locals. Not after last time.” 

For a moment John’s brain flashes up an image of Molly lying on the floor of the second level of the barn, a perfectly round bullet hole in the centre of her forehead and Holland’s voice in the back of his mind saying “Good job, Shep”. It fades quickly, replaced with another, older memory, one that he doesn’t like to examine. He’s getting out of what passes for a bath in this place, an oversized fish box filled up with boiled snow. It feels good to be clean, the smell of eucalyptus in the air fresh and invigorating. He starts to dry with an old towel that they found in a cupboard, thin and threadbare but serviceable, crowding the front of the stove to keep warm. A pair of hands grabbing his shoulders startles him, and for a moment he thinks it’s Rodney, back early from snaring rabbits. He smiles as he turns, but it’s not Rodney who has him in a firm grip; another, crueller face looks down at him, a man so tall and fair he might be a ghost, eyes bloodshot and crinkled with unrestrained glee. John screams. 

“John! John, it’s okay, you’re okay.” Roney’s voice permeates the fear response, pulling John back into awareness of where he is. He opens his eyes and sees Rodney’s anxious face, his mouth downturned in concern, hands flittering in and out of his peripheral vision as they orbit his head. Seeing that John’s tracking, Rodney’s hands move downwards to smooth over his shoulders, his arms, finally gripping his hands. 

“M’fine,” says John. 

“Like hell you are. This is the third time in as many weeks. Goddamnit John, we need a psychiatrist. I’m not trained in trauma therapy. If you were a machine I’d turn you off and on again then run a diagnostic, but you’re not, you’re a man and a good one at that and you need a professional to help you work through things. I’m useless, absolutely useless when it comes to the inner workings of the human brain, and you-” 

“Hey, take a breath,” says John, pulling Rodney’s waving hands back down in front of them. 

“I’m the one who should be saying that to you,” says Rodney. 

“I’ve already taken one. But thanks.” 

“Do you...” Rodney fidgets with his harness. “Do you want to turn back? We can just go home.” 

“No. I’m fine. Really. Just a little...I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Well, I think you ought to talk about it, cause it’s eating you up from the inside out. It’s not like I don’t already know. I was there. I killed him.” 

“Yeah. You did. Thanks for that.” 

“Yes, well he had I coming, preying on you like that. He’s lucky he died from the first hit. If he’d survived, I would have hurt him.” 

John smiles at that. “You badass, you.” 

“I’ve been told I can be very trying when I’m angry.” Rodney unzips his jacket and reaches into the pocket inside. “Here,” he says, bringing out a chocolate bar. “You should have some of this.” 

John takes the chocolate gratefully. It’s warm and starting to melt a little from Rodney’s body heat, just a little bit cloying and oh so good. It’s been a while since they had real chocolate. There were a couple of hot chocolates in the MREs, but it’s not the same as a melting slab on the tongue. He holds the bar out in front of Rodney, and Rodney takes the next piece in his teeth and rolls it around in his mouth, a smudge on his top lip that John has to lean in and lick away. He tucks the rest of the chocolate back into Rodney’s pocket for later and turns to survey the log sort. 

“Do you want to take a look?” asks Rodney. 

John peers down towards the two trailers, glancing over the truck and the log stores and the empty jetty. “We’re here. We might as well.” 

They park the sleds again and make their way to the two trailers via the cab of the truck, which only supplies a few packets of frozen chewing gum that Rodney squirrels away in his backpack. They investigate a trailer each, and John can feel Rodney’s worried eyes on the back of his head as he enters his, but he doesn’t want to dwell on what happened (again) and what it means for his mental health. He knows he has to address the problem, but he feels completely unequipped to do so, and he’s even more reluctant to talk with Rodney for fear of hurting him. Instead, he diverts all his attention to searching the trailer for anything useful. It’s an office space, with several computers and a kitchenette, and he finds some tea and coffee, dried milk powder and sugar sachets in one of the cupboards but nothing more interesting than that. He stuffs the supplies in his pack and heads over to the other trailer, where Rodney’s got his head in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. 

“Anything?” 

Rodney jumps up, banging his head on an open drawer above him. “God! You scared me.” 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to.” 

Rodney stands up two bottles of alcohol hanging from his hands. “I found some moonshine.” He dumps one on the table and uncorks the other, taking a long sniff, then a short swig. “Vodka.” He grimaces. “Or thereabouts.” He holds out the bottle to John. “Want some?” 

“Sure.” John takes a swig from the bottle, and it burns all the way down his throat. “Ugh. Jesus. That would strip the paint off an F-16.” He hands it back to Rodney, who stoppers it and stuffs it into his pack next to the other one. 

“Did you find anything?” asks Rodney.

“Uh, coffee, tea, milk, sugar. It’s all office equipment and electronics in there too.” 

“Still, that’s something.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Let’s move on then.” 

They step out of the trailer, where Miska is sitting patiently, panting hot breath that mists in the air. She starts to wag her tail at the sight of them and they call her after them when they head back up to the main road. Between two of the log stores, John spots something big and orange that makes him smile. He detours down the bank, a grumbling Rodney on his heels, and walks down the narrow corridor between tall walls of processed logs to his prize at the end. It’s a hydraulic log splitter, and he touches it with the kind of reverence only a man who has spent months splitting logs by hand possibly could. If they could get this to work, and if they could get it home, what a godsend it would be. 

“What is it?” asks Rodney. 

“Log splitter,” says John. 

Rodney crouches down in front of the machine. “Hydraulic?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I doubt it will work.” 

“I know. I just…god, it would make life so much easier.” 

“Yeah.” 

“There are so many things that I took for granted. All we have now are our own two hands.” 

Rodney doesn’t have anything to say to that, but John didn’t expect him to. Things are tough, but they’re making do and surviving. He turns his back on the log splitter and heads back to the road to grab the sleds and check the folded map. Where they are now is about two-thirds of the way from the signal box to Quonset, and the sun is up high so they’re making good time. With any luck, they’ll make it to their destination in time for dinner. 

*** 

The township comes into view from a distance, just ahead around a long, clear stretch of road that follows the curve of the coast. It's small, little more than a street of houses with sloping, snow-covered roofs much like any other settlement on the island. On the main road is a low-lying, hangar-shaped bulding called Quincy’s Quonset, presumably the township’s namesake. The train tracks they left behind catches up with them, running parallel alongside and pulling into a station. There’s a long line of log-filled freight cars down an outside track, waiting for a truck that will never come. On the near-side of the station, pulled into a platform, is a train engine with passenger carriages, old fashioned but completely unremarkable until Rodney- 

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” 

-profanes out loud and rushes over to it, ditching the sled and his backpack halfway. John drops his own gear and catches up just as Rodney climbs up the ladder and heads into the cab, making little noises of happiness. 

“You wanna clue me in?” asks John, climbing up to join him. 

“John, this is great, it’s brilliant, even. We can use this!” 

John looks around, confused. “For parts?” he asks. 

“Parts? Oh no, no, no, no, no. It’s a steam train.” 

“And that’s good because...?” 

“Because it runs on steam!” 

“And...?” 

“It doesn’t generate electricity; it literally runs on steam. We can get it going. I can get it going. We can use it to transport things home!” 

“Holy shit.” 

“I know! I just have to do some tinkering, make sure it’s all in order before we try to start it up. Two days, a week tops.” 

“That’s great. You can start tomorrow.” 

You’d think John had just suggested they put Miska down from the look on Rodney’s face. “But I could just have a look at-” 

“Tomorrow. We need to set up somewhere, make camp. Fire and shelter before nightfall, survival one oh one.” 

“Well, technically there is no nightfall, so I could just-” 

“Tomorrow. Don’t make me pull rank.” 

Rodney rolls his eyes but acquiesces, and they make their way to the large hangar-like building, which turns out to be the local gas station/supermarket/garage/post office. It’s large and cavernous, but well-stocked and sheltered, and John eyes an empty 55-gallon steel drum that he could make a fire in to warm it up. 

“What do you think?” he asks. “Should we set up here?” 

Rodney wonders around, looking at the shelves. “It’s central and well-stocked and there’s plenty of room to store and sort our ill-gotten gains. But it’s freezing cold. Can’t we set up in one of the houses?” 

“Did you see any chimneys?” 

“No, but I wasn’t looking.” 

“I was. No chimneys mean no fireplaces.” 

“And no fireplaces mean electric heating. That’s just great. We’ll be popsicles by the morning.” 

“Let me worry about that. You focus on breaking down some wood to burn.” 

As Rodney wonders off, John grabs the drum and rolls it into the back room, part office, part workshop, small enough to hoard the heat but large enough to make camp and, most importantly, having an operable window so they won’t asphyxiate. He rests the drum in the centre of the room, then grabs some equipment from the garage; cinder blocks to rest it on, a hammer and chisel to make holes in the base, some wire mesh to go over the top. It’s a long time since he made a burn-barrel, way back during an extreme-weather training camp in Alaska in fact, but it’s like riding a bike. The hardest part is hammering the holes; the last time he did this he had a high-powered drill, but he's well versed in making do with what he’s got. When Rodney returns with some hacked-up wood, he fills the drum with it then sets it alight, and it isn’t long before the flames are licking the mesh lid and casting shadows all over the room. 

“There’s enough wooden furniture for a couple of days burning,” says Rodney, holding his ungloved hands over the barrel to warm up. “But longer than that we’ll have to start breaking down things in the houses too.” 

John unravels their sleeping bags in the corner of the room while Rodney grabs some food and warms it over the fire. There’s not much to be had in the way of comfort, but a handful of plaid blankets from the shop add a little padding to the cold, hard ground. It feels late, though with no working clocks it’s hard to tell. Johns tired from the trek here, and Rodney’s trying, and failing, to hide a yawn. Miska pads into the office, having completed a thorough walk-around of the entire building and sits down on the bed next to John’s feet. Rodney decants her dinner – genuine dog food, all warmed up – into a mixing bowl he found in the shop and puts it down in front of her. John nudges it with his foot just a little too far for her to reach from where she’s sitting, something he does to remind her that she is, in fact, a dog and not actually a person, but when Rodney scowls at him he pushes it back. Miska looks at her food bowl but doesn’t take a bite until John and Rodney sit down in the office chairs with their own dinners and start to eat. She’s done in record time before either of them has taken more than a couple of forkfuls, and when she’s licked the bowl clean she rests her head on her paws and settles in for the night. 

Dinner finished John coaxes Rodney out of his outer layers and into the sleeping bag, burrowing in beside him and pulling him in close. It’s unnaturally bright, but they’re both too tired to care, and Rodney rests his head on John’s bent arm while John uses a rolled-up blanket as a pillow. 

“What should I do if it happens again?” murmurs Rodney into John’s armpit. It takes John a second to figure out what he’s talking about. 

“Just what you’ve been doing is fine.” 

“It’s not enough.” 

“That’s on me, not you.” 

“I need to help you-” 

“No, you don’t. I’ve weathered trauma before. I know I have the skills to get through it again. I’m just not there yet.” 

“It’s funny how it’s happening now. I thought it would happen much sooner.” 

“I was hoping I skipped it this time around.” 

“Before we leave I’m going to go look for a doctor's office. If there is one there might be a book on psychology, especially in a place like this where the local GP has to do everything herself. I’ll read up on trauma therapy and then you and I are going to get drunk on moonshine and talk about this.” 

“Rodney-” 

“I’m serious. And also sleepy. So don’t argue with me.” 

“Sure thing, buddy.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have read [What Happens In Rúmvegr](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22712416) then you'll recognise Haelaug and Huknna. :)

Rodney and Miska are gone when John wakes up. There’s a note sticking out from underneath the pillow, a scribble of black pen on lined paper saying that they’ve gone to the steam train and there’s some breakfast warming up on the burn barrel – canned apple pie filling with some extra spices stirred through. The smell of it makes his mouth water. John’s always pleasantly surprised by the inventive things that Rodney makes when he has the resources, and the apples are delicious. It’s such a thrill to have something new after months on end of venison and fish. They have a substantial supply of herbs and spices, but after a while, even the taste of different flavours can’t mask the fact that they’re eating the same thing day in, day out. His body had been getting a little soft around the edges through lack of daily training, but with the severe rationing of long-life foodstuffs, both of them have been getting leaner. There’s always the worry of malnutrition without readily available carbohydrates and dairy, and every time they find a cache of food their spirits are lifted and their bodies sated. If Rodney can actually get the steam train running, they’ll have to make a hell of a lot more room than their tiny little pantry for everything they can haul back from here. 

John’s mind turns to another possibility. They’ve really dug in at Mystery Lake Camp Office, made a good go of it and settled in. It’s a good spot for hunting and fishing, and in a good position for firewood. They have a family of crows that visit daily (and a small part of John wonders if they’re alright without their hapless minions to feed them), running water and the ability to heat it up. But people move house for all kinds of reasons, and maybe they should set up in a real house, something small and easy to heat, close to old-world amenities and, most importantly, somewhere that people might think to search for them if they find a way to cross the ocean and have a mind to come looking. The cabin is isolated and a long way from any built-up areas on the island. He didn’t realise that the thought of rescue was still lingering in his mind, but seeing the coast and the boats moored here…well, it’s opened up a pandora’s box of old wounds and lingering hope. What would he do if they did get rescued? Does the United States Air Force still exist without aircraft to fly? Do the old prejudices matter when every day is a struggle to feed and shelter everyone? He never gave a thought to DADT in relation to himself, only in relation to brothers in arms that he needed to protect from scrutiny; alibies and rumours of girlfriends carefully deposited into the ears of people that would spread it far and wide. This thing with Rodney is all-encompassing. It expands in his chest to light up all the dark spaces he had hidden and broken inside him, stretching him out and filling him up until he’s overwhelmed with it. Everything is different now, and he couldn’t hide it, couldn’t live a lie and pretend Rodney is nothing more than a friend to him, even if Rodney was willing to be a secret to protect his career. 

“Hey,” says Rodney as he comes in the back door, Miska bounding up to butt her head into John’s crossed leg. 

“Hey,” says John, around a mouthful of soft apple. He scratches Miska behind the ears and she flops onto her back, a sure sign that she wants her tummy rubbed. He obliges while he watches white Rodney takes off his jacket and gloves and drapes them over a chair. 

“The engine checks out,” says Rodney. “The boiler’s empty, which is good because it means it’s not one giant ice-cube. The piston doesn’t move, but I’m not worried about that because it’s below zero and metal contracts when it’s cold. There’s plenty of coal, they just got a shipment before they evacuated and the tender’s full to the brim. So if I can fill the boiler with water then I can do a trial run, make sure all the parts are fully functional. What do you think?” 

“Is it safe?” asks John. 

“It’s not going to blow up. The very worst-case scenario is simply that it doesn’t move. Best case scenario, we have a way to transport an entire township’s worth of supplies all the way back to the cabin.” 

“Not quite all the way,” says John, scratching his fingers up into the creases between Miska’s stomach and front legs. Rodney’s brow furrows. “There’s a couple of downed carriages on the tracks between here and there.” 

“Pfft. Semantics. It’s something like two kilometres between that and the cabin. It’s practically on our doorstep.” Rodney’s face lights up in the way it does when he gets an idea. Besides, we could always-“ 

“No, Rodney.” 

“But-“ 

“We’re not going to nudge the other train with your shiny new steam engine. That’s a recipe for disaster.” 

Rodney folds his arms and pulls his shoulders up high – a sure sign that he’s winding up for an argument, but then he deflates and nods sagely. “You’re right. It could jeopardise the structural integrity of the steam engine. Then it wouldn’t be any use to anyone.” 

John stands and stacks his empty can on a desk. “How realistic is this steam train idea anyhow?” 

“I’d say eighty twenty in favour. If it doesn’t work it probably won’t be something I can fix without a full team and a rail yard. But if it works…” 

“Need a hand?” 

“You could help me fill up the boiler, assuming the water tower isn’t frozen through. I know it’s grunt work and you’re not technically a grunt but-“ 

“Four hands are better than two. We’ll fill her up, then I’ll start consolidating the supplies while you do a test run.” 

*** 

“Don’t fill it up to the top, there needs to be enough space for steam to form.” 

“Yessir.” 

“Don’t ‘yessir’ me. I’m not your CO.” 

“You’re far too bossy to be my CO.” 

“Yes, preci- wait, what? I am not, you lackadaisical wall support! Hurry up and fill the engine.” 

“Sir, yessir!” 

*** 

Once the boiler is full there’s not much for John to do in the station. Rodney needs time to fine-tune the engine and get it started, so John heads back to the gas station to grab his sled. Miska comes with him, she has as much interest in the train as she does in graph theory, and she bounds in and out between parked cars and houses as he picks his first target. The buildings on the street all look much the same, small and compact with tall roofs and tiny windows. He enters the first house, finds it unlocked and eerily quiet, everything tidied away and in its place. The people living here obviously had a lot more time to prepare to leave than those living in Thomson’s Crossing or around Mystery Lake. There are no dishes left lying around, no drawers open and spilling their contents. It’s ordered and neat and awaiting the return of its inhabitants, and somehow that makes it both sadder and creepier than anything he’s explored before. He starts in the living room, opening drawers and cupboards and carefully removing anything that looks useful. He doesn’t want to trash the place, just in case, but he’s long since accepted the fact that their survival might hinge on the things they take from people’s homes. Rodney told him more than once that he hopes that people have taken whatever they need from his flat and that it’s a sure bet the people who lived here wouldn’t begrudge them supplies considering that they live in a harsh environment. He won’t take anything that looks like it might have sentimental value; nothing handmade or personal, nothing that can’t be replaced should someone return, but toiletries and food are fair game. 

When he gets to the fireplace his eyes get caught on family photos on the mantelpiece, pictures that speak to the love between two women and their daughter: a trip to Disneyland; a Christmas with extended family; and a formal portrait, the girl in a red, plaid dress with a bright, gap-toothed smile, standing in front of her mothers, who are both visibly trying to contain their laughter. This was a loving home, a place they belonged, somewhere they would always want to come back to. John hadn’t had that in a long time, had spent his entire career travelling from place to place on the Air Force’s dime, never stopping in one location long enough to get attached. His time in the cabin has been the longest in one place for the entirety of his adult life, and that’s significant, he recognises that. In another time and place, if they hadn’t been stranded here, he would have craved that, dreamt of it. But things are different now, life is harder, harsher, more dangerous. Can they justify staying in one place when there are so many resources in other locations? Maybe they should have stayed in Thomson’s Crossing until they’d used everything up, then moved on to the next place, then the next. A nomadic lifestyle. Could he be happy, living like that? Could Rodney? Was setting up in Mystery Lake a mistake? Has it made them too soft to survive this unforgiving place? 

He fills up boxes of non-perishables and novels and medications, toothpaste and shampoo and bars of soap. When he opens a door to the kid’s room, he doesn’t go in, just sweeps it from the outside then closes the door quietly. He might have conceded to the necessity of looting, but stealing from a little girl isn’t something he can bring himself to do. There is nothing in her room that he needs enough to justify taking it from her, and he can’t help but imagine how she would feel should she return to find things missing. Looking around the mothers’ room feels equally intrusive. The bedroom of a loving couple is sacrosanct, he’d feel utterly violated if someone pillaged the room that he and Rodney sleep in, make love in. But that’s not a morale that he can uphold if he wants to be able to provide for Rodney. The bedroom is the best place to look for warm clothing, and warm clothing is essential to their continued survival. He spares a brief glance into their underwear drawers until he finds the sock drawer, feels himself flush when he lifts out a couple of pairs of wool socks to find a vibrator underneath. He shuts the drawer quickly then rummages in the wardrobe, under the bed, behind the door. There’s not much suitable for them but that’s not a surprise in a house full of women. He does find a bag full of tote bags hanging up on the back of the door. They all have slogans printed on them, in Inuktitut so he can’t read them, but they’ll be good for storage and packing things to take home so he takes them with him. 

When he finishes in the house, he piles the boxes and bags onto the sled and raises the flag on the mailbox so he knows where he’s already been. It’s crude, but it’s better than spray painting the doors. The second house he enters is so much like the first, the only reason he knows it’s not the same one when he walks in is the brightly coloured afghan draped over the back of the couch. This time he doesn’t linger over the photos in the room, just searches methodically and efficiently, drawing on years of experience in the military to get the job done with minimal fuss. It doesn’t do to dwell on what-might-have-been, that way lies madness. He should have known not to look at the photos in the other house, but curiosity got the better of him. He takes of his gloves briefly to feel the afghan on the couch. It’s thick and soft and the label says it’s made in Indonesia; not a family heirloom then. He debates it for a few moments then folds it up and packs it in the bottom of a box he found in the kitchen. It’ll do for the times when Rodney’s sitting in his reading chair and complaining that “it's literally arctic in here”. The rest of the living room has nothing special, DVDs and CDs that they can’t play, some foreign language books that neither of them can read and some cat-grooming tools in a suede box in a cupboard. John wonders what happened to the cat, if it got taken with the owner or left to its own devices in the great outdoors. Surely any cat this far north would be a housecat, not an outdoor one. It gets so terribly cold up here, too cold for your average feline to wander around stalking mice. 

He hits the jackpot in the kitchen; dozens of boxes of dried pasta sit in a make-shift pantry, some much-needed carbohydrates, along with a couple of crates of home-made pasta sauce. He’d bet his rifle that at least one of the people living here was Italian or at the very least European. It’s more than he can carry on his own, so instead of carting it out in pieces he leaves it all where it is and raids the upstairs, putting a rock on top of the mailbox when he leaves to remind him to come back another time with Rodney in tow. He repeats his methodical exploration for the next two houses, marking them as done when he finishes, his sled already full to overflowing with supplies. There’s enough to keep them going for a significant amount of time, and he still has several houses to check out. He heads back to the gas station, sled in tow and Miska leading the way, and dumps his well-gotten-gains inside the office before heading back over to the train station to check on Rodney. 

“How’s it going?” he asks. 

“Oh, you’re just in time for the test-run,” says Rodney. “Come give me a hand.” 

*** 

It doesn’t work. John can only understand half of Rodney’s ramblings, but from what he can make out it’s not the boiler. There’s steam being made in the engine, it’s just not making its way out, and if the steam doesn’t flow then the piston doesn’t pump, and if the piston doesn’t pump then the wheels don’t turn. Rodney makes some noise about valves and rust, and the heartbroken look on his face is too much for John. He takes Rodney back to the gas station and warms up some canned pears and Nutella for dinner to cheer him up. 

“We could always stay here,” he says, handing Rodney a spork and a bowl. 

“Even if we stayed for a few weeks, I can’t take apart the train without some serious manpower and heavy machinery and, you know, actual electricity.” Rodney takes a bite of chocolate-covered pear. “Oh my god, this is divine.” 

John takes his own spoonful and,  _ Jesus, _ Rodney’s right, it’s so damn good. He’s really missed eating indulgent foods. Even when he was deployed, he had regular access to hydrogenated oils and refined sugar. “I didn’t mean for a couple of weeks,” he says, around his own mouthful of pear. 

“Well a couple of months isn’t going to change anything either,” says Rodney, licking the back of his spoon. 

John takes a breath. “What about a more permanent kind of stay?” 

Rodney drops his spoon on the floor. “As in move here?” 

“Yeah, we could-“ 

“But...but...the crows and the log stores and the coffee-sack curtains and the hares that never learn to avoid our snares and all of our things?” 

“I just meant-“ 

“And my fishing hut and the little stove that gives out more heat than something so small should be able to, really it totally defies the laws of physics for it to make the second floor so hot, and your sudoku puzzles and our ice house and…you can’t be…are you serious?” 

“I only thought-“ 

“But…but it’s home!” 

John feels something in his chest contract at that word tumbling from Rodney’s lips. They’ve made a home together, and that’s more than just four walls and a roof, it’s time and effort and memories, their first kiss, their last argument, Rodney’s scribbled proofs and John’s half-finished sudokus, the sound of Miska’s claws on the stairs, the light of the moon filtering in through their bedroom window. 

“Okay,” says John. 

“Okay?” asks Rodney. 

“I was really only thinking out loud. If we have to haul all this stuff by sled then so be it.” 

“I’m not…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted like that…it’s just that…I’ve never belonged anywhere before.” 

John’s surprised by this. “What about your flat in Toronto?” 

“It was just a place to sleep. I spent most of my waking hours at the university. When I wasn’t there I was in Geneva. Look, I know the cabin isn’t much, it’s just a tourist office with some rickety, old beds, but it’s the best place I’ve ever lived and I don’t want to leave it.” 

“Me neither, Rodney. I was just thinking about logistics and supplies. But you’re right. It’s home.” 

“Besides, what would Haelaug and Huknna do without us?” 

“Who?” 

“The crows!” 

Of course Rodney named the crows. He probably has names for their juveniles too. “You’re right. We have to be there for the crows. God knows that wild animals can’t fend for themselves, we should cut off their wings and-“ 

“That’s it!” yells Rodney. 

“What?” 

“The cutoff is out of alignment so the inlet valve isn’t being opened. I can totally fix that!” 

“You can?” 

“Yeah. I just need to realign the piston.” 

Rodney makes to get up, but John pulls him back down with a hand on his belt. 

“Not today,” he says. 

“It won’t take long, John. I just need to-” 

“Tomorrow.” 

“But-” 

“It’s getting late, and you’re getting ahead of yourself. There’s no urgency here, we need to take things slow and steady. You can’t risk an accident where you might get hurt.” 

“It’s not dangerous, I just need to take off some panels and-” 

“If it was me, what would you say?” 

“I’d say go for it.” 

“No Rodney, think about it. If I wanted to, say, take a rowing boat out into the bay and catch some fish, what would you say to me?” 

Rodney’s shoulders slump a little as he thinks about it. “I’d tell you to wait for the morning and make a plan.” 

“Exactly. So stop running off half-cocked. Just because it’s not dark, doesn’t mean it’s not night time. You’re only human, you need sleep and rest like the rest of us, especially after all the manual labour you’ve been doing today. The train won’t up and leave in the middle of the night, and I have a lot of ground to cover collecting supplies from the houses.” 

“Okay, okay, you’re right,” says Rodney. “I just want something to go right for a change.” 

John can empathise with that. The loss of civilisation has made everything they do difficult and fraught with danger. A lot of things they both used to take for granted are now death traps. Food is hard to come by, especially in the winter. Trips outside run the risk of being met by bears or wolves. Water that hasn’t been boiled long enough can cause debilitating stomach upsets, as they found out one unfortunate week in the early Summer. There are no backups or second chances, no hospitals or doctors or coastguard should they fall down a ravine. They can only rely on each other now, for everything. And while John’s fully trained in first aid, he’s not an ER doctor or a surgeon, not a real medic or a nurse practitioner. If push comes to shove, he can extrapolate from his training for a lot of things, but there are issues that might come up that he’d be completely out of his depth for. He has seen so many things in his military career that needed far more than what he was capable of, and the past couple of months have really hammered that home. 

“I’ve got a good feeling about this,” says Rodney, snapping John out of his funk. “I think it’s going to work. It’s well within my skill set to get a machine up and running.” 

“I have no doubt about that, Rodney,” says John. “If anyone can get all these supplies back home in one go, it’s you.” 

“With a little help from my glamourous assistant, of course,” says Rodney. “You’ll lend a hand, won’t you?” 

“Sure thing, buddy. You just say that word and I’m there. Tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow. Right.” 

John notices Rodney looking back at him out of the corner of his eye. He looks like he wants to say something but isn’t sure of his reception. 

“Whatever it is, Rodney, I won’t bite.” 

“I was just wondering if you came across a doctor's office?” 

Oh. “Not yet, but I haven’t explored that far. I’m working through this place building by building.” 

“It’s just that Quonset is bigger than Thomson’s Crossing, and surely there was a permanent medical professional here? I mean, unless they got weekly visits from Milton, which I suppose is feasible, someone could always travel here by train in an emergency, but with the log sort and the town and the cannery there’s a lot of potential for an accident and-” 

“What cannery?” 

“Oh, didn’t I tell you about the cannery?” asks Rodney. 

“No. You were too excited about the inlet valve. So where is this cannery?” 

“A little further east along the coast. Hibernia Processing, it’s called.” 

“Never heard of it.” 

“I saw a leaflet at the train station. It’s a whaling station and cannery, specialises in mikigaq and muktuk; whale meat and blubber.” 

Just the thought of eating blubber makes John’s stomach start to rebel. “You’ve, uh, had both before haven’t you?” 

“I have.” 

“What are they like?” 

Rodney’s face scrunches up as he tries to categorise the taste of both foods in his mind. “The meat is kind of like moose or caribou, which surprises people because they’re sea animals, but they’re still mammals, not fish so it makes sense. It’s surprisingly edible, but not my favourite thing in the world. Muktuk is...chewy. Someone once said it tastes like the jerky of a cow exclusively fed sardines, but that’s only if it’s dried. Raw it’s gross. Deep-fried it’s vaguely edible but too pungent for me. I’d only eat it if there was nothing else.” 

“So it’s not worth a trip to the cannery to stock up?” asks John. 

“With all the deer and hares we have fluttering around the cabin? Not even remotely. Look at it this way, we know where the cannery is should all available pray on the island become extinct through no fault of our own. I’d rather eat deer testicles than muktuk. God, I’d rather eat live maggots than muktuk. It’s definitely something you need to have been eating from birth to ingest regularly. If you’re curious, there are some tins from the cannery on one of the shelves in here. We could open one up.” 

“No thank you, I’m just fine without ever eating whale.” 

“I’ll take the tins home anyway, it might make decent bait.” 

John’s seen Rodney use all kinds of weird and wonderful things as bait: hare livers and kidneys, sliced deer stomach and intestine, one time he tried brain matter but it didn’t take. And on another memorable occasion, he tried making his own artificial bait from brightly coloured wire and bird feathers. It was semi-successful in that it attracted the fish to come to take a look, but a total bust in that they refused to latch on. Offal works a treat, but they produce too much of it through hunting to use it all up, instead they use it as part of Miska’s dinner, adding bits of the various organs to supplement her share of the meat (she’s far less squeamish than they are, though John knows from experience that if he was hungry enough it would start to look appetising). She seems to love it, gets over-excited when they chop up some raw liver and mix it in with the rest, wolfs it down like she’s in a competition. John wonders if it reminds her of her months alone on the island where she had to fend for herself, hunting and killing and eating straight out of the carcass. You wouldn’t think it to look at her, but she’s a survivor through and through. Has the scars to prove it, though they’re mostly covered by her fluffy fur. 

While Rodney cleans out the empty cans, John grabs the afghan from the sled and shakes it open over their sleeping bag. It’s bright and cheerful in zig-zagged stripes of shades of purple and cream and black, a little girly but then they’ve long gotten over that kind of mindset, making the most of every resource they find no matter how gendered or feminised. (Rodney’s stocked an entire box with tampons and sanitary towels from the gas station for any conceivable bloody emergency. John knows he’s still rattled by John getting shot that one time, so he doesn't ask him about it in any great detail, but he appreciates that kind of forethought and planning. With any luck, there will be no more bullets in their futures to contend with. Still, the tampons will be great in case of any nosebleeds, something Rodney confessed to having an abundance of in his childhood.) Rodney smiles at the sight of the Afghan and smooths his hand over it when they get into bed. 

“This is nice,” he says. “Where did you find it?” 

“One of the houses,” says John, shuffling around to curl himself around Rodney. “It was on the back of a couch. Thought it could keep you toasty and warm when you’re reading or writing mathematical proofs.” 

“Or your cold feet.” 

“My feet aren’t cold.” 

“John. Please. Every night you tuck your icy cold feet up in between my legs. Trust me, they’re cold.” 

“Yeah, but you warm them and then they’re not.” 

They both laugh out loud, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping quiet so as not to disturb a sleeping Miska over by the fire. Still snorting, John presses a kiss into Rodney’s neck, then his jaw, then his lips, and the tension in the room snaps from hilarity to lust as sudden as the cracking of ice underfoot. Rodney pulls his trapped arm out from under John and wraps it around his neck to hold him close, pressed mouth to mouth. John moans and Rodney quickly shushes him, glancing over to where Miska lays snoring softly. 

“Jeez Rodney, it’s not like she’s never heard us before.” 

“No, but she’s right there, it’s...it’s indecent!” 

“S’fine. She doesn’t care.” 

“That’s easy for you to-mmmph!” 

John tilts his head and attacks Rodney’s mouth with his own like a starving man sitting down at a feast. Rodney moans at the onslaught, opens up to let John’s tongue in and thrusts his hips urgently up into John’s pelvis. John presses down and they both sigh into each other’s mouths at the feeling of much-needed friction for both of them. It’s quick and dirty, John pushing down their underwear and taking care of both of them with one well-practised hand. Rodney’s eyes are shut the whole time and John bites his lip to keep in all the sounds trying to escape, and when it’s over they collapse in a worn-out heap, repositioning until Rodney’s spooning John from behind, John’s cold feet having snuck in between Rodney’s warm calves. John listens as Rodney falls into a deep sleep, his slow steady breaths matching the rhythm of John’s heart, and Miska’s snuffles as her legs twitch in an imaginary chase of some poor, unsuspecting hare. 


	4. Chapter 4

In the end, it’s a quick fix in the morning to get the train running again. Rodney removes a couple of panels and pours hot water over the piston, then the two of them force it forward and back and something clunks into place inside the engine. Rodney makes John spend the rest of the day working on the train, greasing the machinery and sweeping out the snow, tinkering inside panels and setting her up. This time when Rodney lights the engine it works a dream; steam flows out of the chimney and fills the roof of the train station, causing the ice up there to melt and drip down on them like rain. Before John gets a chance to cheer, Rodney drags him into the cab and puts it into motion, slowly and steadily, driving it out of the station on half-buried tracks. When it’s clear that Rodney’s ministrations have worked, John pulls the whistle in excitement. It makes Rodney jump out of his skin, but it’s worth it for the look of pure joy on his face when he realises that they don’t have to trek home through the snow. 

“We’ll have to go slow,” says Rodney calmly, his gesturing hands belaying his excitement. “If we go too fast, we might come off the rails, quite literally, since they’re buried under the snow and debris. But if we keep a reasonable speed, say ten to fifteen miles an hour? I’m going to go on faith that we’ll stay on track and make it all the way back to Mystery Lake in an afternoon.” 

“Rodney, that’s just great! You’re brilliant!” 

“I am, aren’t I?” Rodney folds his arms and a smug smile creeps across his face. “We can fill up the carriages with everything we want to take back, possibly even keep it on the train for storage. It’s a shame that the other train is stuck on the tracks, but for the sake of two kilometres...I mean it’s practically home.” 

They pull the breaks on the train and set it in reverse, easing it back into the platform of the station. Rodney shuts down the blower to let the fire die out and the train hisses and seems to shrug as it cools down. Miska is sitting on the side of the platform by the exit where they left her when they decided to take the train out for a little joy ride. She comes up to them when they step out of the cab, tail wagging and tongue lolling in all the excited joy that she gets when they come back from wherever they deigned to go without her. She doesn’t seem to have separation anxiety – doesn’t whimper or bark when they leave – but she’s always pleased whenever they return, be it from chopping wood or hunting or fishing, always has a tail wag and a headbutt ready for them. Rodney kneels and showers her in affection, tells her she’s a good girl, a smart girl, and a beautiful girl as he scratches her neck and pats her tummy. 

“Wanna take a walk?” asks John, interrupting their owner-pet time, though who is the owner and who is the pet in their relationship is anyone’s guess. They’re both utterly enamoured with one another, and in another life, John might be jealous of all the attention Rodney gives this particular girl. 

“Where to?” asks Rodney. 

“There’s a harbour with a pier. We could scope out the beach. It’d be nice to do something recreational, and Miska’s been sitting still all day. We could throw her some sticks or something.” 

Rodney stands and brushes the snow off his trousers. “Yeah, okay, that’d be great.” 

They cross through the town and onto the main through road, spot signs for the slip road that leads down to the harbour. There are some larger houses here; not even in the arctic can you escape gentrification, and John makes a mental note to add them to his search grid. You never know what someone of greater means might have left behind in the great escape. 

Rodney diverts his attention to a shack at the top of the pier; it has an Inuktitut name but the menu is bilingual and John recognises the French for the various drinks on offer: américano, café espresso, café cappuccino, café au lait, café bombon, chocolat chaud. The illustrated food menu has muktuk and poutine and newspaper cones of cold-water shrimp tails as well as smoked char and pickled herring and crêpes with lashings of Nutella, and John feels instantly nostalgic and a little homesick. It would be wonderful if they could have a steaming hot chocolate made by someone else’s hands with milk that wasn’t powdered. He imagines buying Rodney a paper tray of poutine and watching him dip each French fry into the gravy, his mouth slick with grease and smiling as he indulges himself. He longs for the bustling crowds that flock to the beach in summer, even in the arctic, to watch the whales or head out on boat trips or just search for shells in amongst the seaweed. Kids pulling their parents impatiently to show them a beached jellyfish or a scuttling crab in a rockpool. Young lovers walking arm in arm down the promenade. Dogwalkers stopping for a chat while their canines sniff and frolic and play. Fuck, they’re so alone, just the two of them, alone and vulnerable and in over their heads, no backup, no-one watching their six, no evac or medic or- 

“John?” 

John sucks in a breath and looks at Rodney. 

“You okay?” asks Rodney when John doesn’t speak.

“I-yeah. Fine.” 

“Only you’re breathing a little hard.” 

“I’m just...I...” 

Rodney takes John’s hand in his and squeezes tight. “Everything is okay.” 

“I know.” 

“What would you order?” 

“Hmm?” 

Rodney nods towards the shack. “On the menu. What would you order?” 

“Hot chocolate and crêpes. You?” 

“Hot chocolate and poutine.” 

John grins. He was right on the money with the poutine. 

“What?” exclaims Rodney. “Why are you grinning like a loon?” 

“You are so very Canadian sometimes.” 

“When in Canada...” 

They amble onto the beach where Miska has already picked out her throwing stick. More of a log, really; over a meter long and as thick as John’s wrist. She rushes towards then, stick wobbling precariously in her mouth, feet steady and sure on the rocks. 

“Try again, Miska,” says John when she drops it down at their feet. Rodney picks up a more reasonable stick and waves it in Miska’s face. 

“What about this one?” he asks. Miska sits on her hind legs and watches the stick with rapt attention, and when Rodney releases  it she storms after it, catching it just before it hits the ground and sprinting back over the rocky shore to drop it in front of John. 

“Oh, I see how it is,” says Rodney, but he’s grinning and clearly content to watch John do most of the throwing. John throws and throws until his arm is tired, then throws some more until Miska’s out of breath and in danger of pushing herself too far. 

“That’s enough, Miska,” he says when she drops the stick again. “Come on, time to head back.” 

When they get back up the bank, Rodney insists that they break into the shack to raid it for anything interesting and take it back to the gas station. There’s not a lot left; some shrimp tails in the bottom of the dead freezer that they ignore, some rolled herring in big jars that neither of them is particularly enthusiastic to try. Rodney collects all the chocolate that sits in one of the cupboards, and John takes the handful of tins of condensed milk that he fills his pack with. They pull out a solitary bag of coffee beans from under the counter, then they step out and close up the shack, zipping up their packs and swinging them back over their backs. John looks out to sea as Rodney makes sure the door is closed tight, spots something that he didn’t notice while they were down on the beach. 

“Hey, Rodney?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Do you see what I see?” 

Rodney looks out across the water, his brow furrowed and his eyes squinting in the sunlight. “No,” he says. 

“Look,” John says and he points at an island in the bay. “Is that a house?” 

Rodney squints again and John can tell when he spots it by the intensity of his gaze. “It looks like it.” 

“It’s big,” says John. 

“Yeah.” 

“Could have something interesting.” 

“John Sheppard, are you about to ask me if we can, what, row out to the island to check out the house?” 

“Yes?” 

“You want to go out on the open water? Are you insane?” 

“Could be. Big old house like that, it’s bound to have something good in it.” 

Rodney huffs for a moment, but even he can’t come up with a valid reason not to go. “Fine,” he says. “We’ll go tomorrow.” 

John grins as he picks up the coffee beans. “Come on. Let’s get back. There’s a pack of ramen with your name on it.” 

“Oh my god, MSG, how I’ve missed you.” 

*** 

They set off for the island early in the morning. Rodney makes John test out all the rowboats moored on the pier before he’ll even consider getting in one, dismissing several viable options for petty reasons like peeling paint or minute traces of rust on the oarlocks. John lets it slide each time until he gets to the last (utterly flawless) boat and Rodney tries to dismiss it because “it’s grey, it will look like a seal to any hungry predators swimming in the bay”. 

“Rodney, what’s the real problem here?” asks John from where he’s standing inside the boat. 

Rodney’s grip on the mooring tightens until his knuckles are white. “I-uh...I don’t-I mean, nothing, I just-” 

“You have a fear of rowing, is that it?” 

“No.” 

“So what then?” 

“Whales.” 

“Come again?” 

“I have a fear of whales.” 

“Oh.” That’s something John can actually deal with. “There are no whales in the bay,” he says with absolute confidence. 

“How do you know? They could be waiting deep down for us to start rowing, then swim up and up and open their big mouths and swallow us whole and-” 

“Woah, okay Jonah, let’s unpack that. One, the bay isn’t deep enough for a whale to swim in without their fins poking up out of the surface of the water. Two, whales can’t eat a boat whole. Three, whales don’t actually hunt human beings. Four-” 

“How do you know?” 

“How do I know what?” 

“That the bay isn’t deep enough for a whale to hide in?” 

John spreads his arms out wide. “See all these boats?” 

“Yeah...” 

“None of them are suitable for sailing on the deep sea. They’re all for shallow water.” 

“But the log sort...” 

“Is way out west. There’s probably a channel of deep water that passes through the bay somewhere, but it ain’t here.” 

“But the whales-” 

“If there was a whale in the bay we would know by now. Get your ass in the boat. We’re rowing to the island.” 

Rodney hesitates and dithers, waving his hand around as he debates with himself, but John waits him out and sure enough, after a few minutes he climbs down the ladder into the boat. John climbs up to grab Miska and carry her down while Rodney shuffles aft and sits down right at the stern. Miska stands forward of the boat, one paw on the bow, steady despite the rocking motion as John unmoors them and sits down on the centre thwart facing Rodney. He starts to row, pulling them out from the pier and into the bay, watching Rodney grip the side of the boat tightly and peer around for signs of whales breaching the surface of the water. 

“So why whales?” asks John, pulling the oars through the water. 

“What do you mean?” says Rodney. 

“I mean, most people are afraid of sharks, not whales.” 

“Moby Dick.” 

“Moby Dick made you afraid?” 

“Yeah. It’s the only book that my parents ever read to me. I’ve had nightmares of being eaten by a whale my whole life.” 

“Sorry. That kind of sucks.” 

“Tell me about it. I remember going to a birthday party of some other kid in school and it was at a park with a lake that had paddle boats on it. Well, it was more of a pond, really. I was okay for a while, but then somewhere in the middle, I remembered about the whales and panicked. My parents had to wade in to pull me to shore, then they had the audacity to tell me off for not behaving. I mean, it was their stupid story that got me into the situation in the first place.” 

The more Rodney shares of his childhood, the less John likes his parents. “That was a shitty thing to do,” he says, correcting his course with a quick glance over his shoulder. 

“Yes, well. It was the talk of the school until the next big thing, which also happened to me cause it was when April Bingham kissed me and gave me mono. I had to be off school for a month, and my parents were even madder about that than the park thing.” 

John pulls the oars harder and starts to feel himself get a little out of breath. “How could they...be mad that you...got ill?” 

“Cause someone had to be at home with me every day, so they had to take time off work to, you know, be a parent. God forbid Jennie or I actually be a child and need parenting, you’d have thought we were asking them to kill each other.” 

“Sounds...rough. Sorry, buddy.” 

“Hm. Well, it’s not like I’m scarred for life or anything.” 

“Sure, sure. You’re just...terrified of whales.” 

“Well, yes, I’m scared of them,” snaps Rodney. “But I’m over my parents. They’re not worth the headspace.” 

“Glad to...hear it. And here we are.” 

Rodney’s head snaps front and centre. “Oh,” he says, as the boat pulls into the tiniest jetty that John’s ever seen. It’s spindly and rickety, and he hopes to god that it will hold their weight. The last thing they need is a submersion into the sea. John moors the boat and they all get out, the tide being high enough that Miska can hop onto the jetty without help. A path leads up some steps into a rocky cliffside, and they climb up until the house comes into view. It’s huge and sprawling, two floors high and easily five bedrooms. The Canadian flag flies high out of one of the top windows, and the green front door is wide open, beckoning them in. John enters first with the rifle in his hands, just in case, but there’s no one there and no sign of animal life. The living room is large and spacious, enough seating for a platoon of marines, with a state-of-the-art television and a Blu-ray player on the wall gathering dust. One chair in particular seems well used, embroidered and worn through with books and magazines piled up next to it. The side table has a pile of clothing on it awaiting repair, and a sewing kit lies open on the seat. There are lanterns with candle stubs all around the room like they were all left alight to burn out all at once. A long console table spans the entire back wall, and on it is a range of drinks, all alcoholic, from a bottle of 18-year-old Talisker Whisky to genuine Daiginjo sake. Whoever lived here was into the finer things in life back when the world wasn’t stood still. The juxtaposition of old-world comfort and new world survival is jarring, and John finds it hard to consolidate what he’s seeing into one single picture. 

Rodney picks up the Talisker and uncorks it to take a sniff. “Wow, it’s the real thing,” he says. 

“I find it hard to believe that someone just up and left all this,” says John. 

“What do you mean?” asks Rodney. 

“It’s lived in, recently lived in,” says John, and Rodney eyes the room. John drags a finger across the console table and lifts it up. “But there’s enough dust all over things that it’s been a couple of weeks.” 

“Someone was here while we’ve been living in the Cabin?” 

“Yes. Definitely. But they’re not here now.” 

Rodney heads over to a framed map on the wall, the curve of the coast instantly recognisable as that of Great Bear Island. “Do you think they left to look for supplies?” he asks. 

“No. If that was the issue, they’d have started in Quonset. There’s no sign that anyone’s been there on a supply run. Whoever they were, they had an honest-to-god prepper’s stash here. Not a couple of months' worth, like at the Cabin, but enough for the entire time we’ve been stranded.” 

Rodney puts the Talisker back down on the table. “So if not supplies, then what?” 

“I honestly don’t know,” says John. “I’m going to do a sweep of the house to be sure.” 

“Okay. I’ll take a look around outside.” 

John’s not too comfortable with the thought of Rodney poking around outside without a gun, curses himself for letting the other one slip out of his fingers that time that Rodney fell through the ice, but the threat level is minimal – it's abundantly clear that no one has stepped through this house in a while. Once Rodney’s passed through the kitchen and gone out the back door, John tells Miska to stay and starts up the stairs to the bedrooms, clearing them one by one, taking note of each room as he checks it: the first is an immaculate guest room with lace doilies on the dresser and blackout curtains tied back by a ribbon; the second another guest room, much like the first but with a massive patchwork spread on the double bed; the third is a well-worn, lived in master bedroom with piles of laundry and a rumpled bed, a snapshot in time of whoever lived here; the fourth room is piled floor to ceiling with boxes of old magazines and newspapers, pieces of yellowing history dating all the way back to the early fifties from what John can see; the last is a craft room, with a treadle sewing machine and an abundance of rolls of fabrics and boxes of haberdashery. It looks like whoever lived here was alone and experienced enough in old-school skills to have made a comfortable life for themselves. The best John can do is hope to sew in a straight line, but the person who lived here was an exceptional tailor judging by the many and varied items of clothing draped on hangers. Trousers and shirts with numerous pockets and patches in places that wear through fast, all made to measure for someone who is much shorter than either John or Rodney and a hell of a lot thinner. On first glance John thinks *woman*, but the clothes are all straight lines and beanpole dimensions. So a man then, but a particularly small one. 

He makes his way back to the master bedroom and pokes his head in. There’s a large, antique, mahogany wardrobe, tall as the room itself with floral carvings and spiral supports. A matching dresser sits on the opposite wall, covered in a decorative lace-edged cloth and littered with elegant but tarnished silver photo frames, pictures of a young man and what looks like his mother, both waspishly thin like a stiff breeze would push them over. The photos are in black and white and catalogue important events in the man's life as he ages, birthdays and graduation, looking smart in a suit and with slicked-down hair (his first job perhaps?). As the man gets older, so does the mother; he stands taller and taller while she shrinks in on herself until she’s wheelchair-bound and he’s standing behind her out in the garden on a sunny day, hands on the push-handles and a fake smile that speaks to inner turmoil and despair. That’s the last photo taken, John assumes she died shortly after, but there’s no frame of reference for what years they are all from. The clothes are tastefully unfashionable for any decade, pristine and practical, colours unknowable in the monochrome of the prints. 

When John looks out the bedroom window he can see Rodney in the garden, standing in front of what looks like a grave marker, a wooden cross sticking out the ground, the grave itself hidden underneath the snow. By the time John gets downstairs and heads outside Rodney’s moved on, is standing at the edge of the rear cliff looking down at the water below with his hands cupping his eyes from the glare of the sun. John sneaks a look at the cross – Levinia Okalik 1923-2005 – then joins Rodney at the edge of the island. 

“Something interesting?” asks John, and Rodney points a finger at a ledge far below, halfway between them and the sea. There’s a body there, small and unassuming, looking like the man might have just curled up on his side and fell asleep except for the bilateral compound fractures of the shins. He’s been done over by the birds so it’s hard to make any kind of realistic ID or determine his age at death, but it’s not a stretch to assume that he’s the man in the photos and the man who made all the clothing upstairs. 

“Huh,” says John. “He must have fallen over the side in the dark.” 

“I don’t think so,” says Rodney. “Look.” 

Rodney points again, this time at something out on the tree branches that stick out the side of a cliff. It’s an unmistakable bird nest, almost in arm’s reach. If John fell to his belly and  strained he’d be able to grab  hold of it and- 

“Oh,” says John. “He was trying to get the eggs.” 

“I think so. But he reached out too far and fell down the cliff. Broke his legs. God, he must have been lying there for days before he died.” 

“Maybe he hit his head on the way down,” says John. It’s a stretch considering the way he’s lying curled in on himself, but if it might help to ease Rodney’s sadness it’s a worthy lie. 

“I hope so,” says Rodney, but John knows he’s too smart to believe it. 

John watches Rodney process the sight before him. “What do you want to do?” he asks when the silence stretches out too long. 

Rodney turns to look at him through slatted eyes. “Nothing we can do,” he says, finally, and turns and walks back into the house. John joins him, pulling the back door shut. It’s made of wood and has warped in its frame from the salty sea air, so John has to slam it then yank a few times to get it fully closed. When he turns around, Rodney’s looking at a couple of dead, frozen, white birds hanging by their feet above the sink. 

“I think they’re edible,” he says. 

“How do you know?” asks John. 

“What other reasons would he have had to wring their necks and drain their blood?” 

“Some kind of satanic ritual?” 

“Please. Everyone knows Satanists are just realists in disguise. They’re no more spiritual than librarians, and- oh. You’re pulling my chain, aren’t you.” 

“Yup.” 

“Well. Regardless. If he ate them then so can we. And since there are literally flocks of them back by the cabin...” 

“We’ve just increased our hunting potential by an entire species.” 

“Seriously John, they are all over the place. I’ve been shooing them away in the mornings when I’ve been raking the patch of dirt for the crows to feast on. They like the berries we grow.” 

“They won’t like it so much when we start shooting them out of the sky.” 

They both look out the window and watch as some adult birds come swooping down into the nest out on the cliff. More food supplies can only be a good thing, but what John really wants is a reliable source of veg and grain. What they salvage from Quonset will keep them going for a long time, but what happens after? 

“We should get a move on,” says Rodney. 

“Yeah. Let’s bring everything useful into the living room then sort it all into boxes. We can probably take five boxes in the boat. Any more and we’ll be too low in the water and risk capsizing.” 

“There’s a pantry in the cellar but it’s practically empty,” says Rodney. “Nothing but a handful of cans and some mice droppings.” 

“I don’t think we really need food anyway. There’s a lot to be had in Quonset, so let’s focus on other things. First aid, survival gear, weapons-” 

“That guy couldn’t have been less militant if he tried.” 

“Still, there are always things that can be repurposed.” 

“Right,” says Rodney, resolute. “There were some empty boxes in the cellar, I’ll bring them up.” 

John clears some space on the coffee table, tucking the sewing work in progress into a bag on the floor next to the well-worn comfy chair, and stacking the half-read magazines on the pile on the other side. Rodney returns carrying a stack of boxes taller than he is, and John takes them one by one and lays them out on the table. He points to them one at a time. 

“Medical, tools, consumable, wearable, other.” 

“Want me to write it on each box? I found a sharpie.” 

“Whatever floats your boat, Rodney.” 

John heads back up to the bedrooms while Rodney does his thing, clearing bedrooms one and two quickly – they have nothing interesting to offer except a magnifying mirror that John figure will be good for self-care and shaving. The master bedroom is disappointing; John find little but clothing that won’t fit either of them (drawers and drawers full of outlandish attire, including one dedicated to garish waistcoats) and moth-eaten blankets piled high in the walk-in closet. He doesn’t even bother with the newspaper room – it's not like they care what happened nearly sixty years ago – and heads straight into the craft room at the end. It’s incredibly well-stocked, clearly dressmaking was more than a hobby; it might even have been a career. John piles the unused packets of needles into a bag (good for stitches when one of them inevitably get hurt) and boxes of every kind of thread imaginable, minus anything sparkly of course. There’s some clear, plastic thread that will do the next time that Rodney gets over-enthusiastic when he’s gutting a fish, and some super-strong cotton thread that will hold their clothing repair work much better than the thin stuff they have at home. Spare buttons go into the bag, in all kinds of shapes and sizes, as do safety pins and elastic and strong cord. Zips and decorative items get left in their drawers, but John’s musing over a roll of thick, Scottish tweed, natural and strong, could be useful for patchwork, when Rodney comes stomping upstairs, Miska in tow, and pokes his head into the room. 

“How’s it going?” he asks. 

“Just the bathroom left,” says John. 

“I’ll get it,” says Rodney, and John hears him enter the only bathroom in the building. 

“John!” shouts Rodney, and John drops everything to rush through and rescue Rodney from whatever’s freaking him out. He throws open the bathroom door and finds Rodney crouched on the bathroom floor, his hands covering his head, and above him, hanging upside down on the rafters, is a cluster of bats, all big ears and spindly wings. John shudders in revulsion as he grabs Rodney around the waist and pulls him out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind them. 

“Okay, the bathroom is a no-go,” he says, crouching down to pull Rodney’s head up out of his hands. “You okay, buddy?” 

“I hate bats,” says Rodney, flapping his hands around. “I hate whales and I hate bats and I want to go home.” 

“Soon. We just gotta load up the train then we can go. Let’s get our boxes and head back to Quonset, okay?” 

“Fine, yes, okay, great.” 

John heads into the craft room to grab his bag then leads Rodney downstairs, pleased to find he’s filled up most of the box-space with things from the living room, kitchen and dining room. Two boxes, the ones labelled consumable and medical, are filled to the brim with the bottles of alcohol that used to sit on the table. It’s one hell of a feat of engineering considering just how many there were, but Rodney’s tucked them all in enough that the tops can close. 

“Good job,” says John. 

“I also found this,” says Rodney, reaching into his pocket and bringing out a genuine Victorinox Astronaut Swiss Army knife circa 1989, made to mark the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It’s in good condition,  well-oiled and free of rust, the image of an astronaut still sharp and clear. 

“That’s a great find, Rodney,” says John, and Rodney holds it out to him to take. John’s thrilled by the find, but- “You should keep it. You’re the one who fixes everything.” 

Rodney’s mouth relaxes into a soft, pleased smile, the bats all forgotten, and he slides the tool back into his pocket. “I guess that’s everything.” 

“Want to do one last check of the pantry? Just in case?” 

“Well, since we’re here...” 

Rodney forces open the back door and leads John around to the side of the house where the cellar hatch sits at an angle on the side of the house. He pulls open the squeaky doors, and a loud, rushing sound comes from behind them. They turn around fast, just in time to see a breached Orca splashing back under the surface of the water. They stand and stare as one by one the entire pod rushes up to break through the surface, flopping over playfully and slamming back down in a belly flop that rivals even John’s 1st-grade school bully diving into the pool at team swim. It’s a glorious sight, and even Rodney seems awed by it, fear of whales notwithstanding. 

“You know,” says John. “Orcas aren’t actually whales.” 

“No, they’re dolphins.” 

“So there’s really no need to be afraid.” 

“I’m not. They’re far enough away that they can’t get me, anyway.” 

“Okay, enough standing around. Let’s check out the pantry then get going.”


	5. Chapter 5

When they empty out the last few cans of food the pantry is well and truly depleted and John starts to sympathise with the man that lived here and his quest to capture the birds’ eggs. He must have been ageing, his body no longer as fit and able as it once was, the thought of rowing to the main island an impossible dream. He imagines him rationing his supplies, stretching them as far as he can and supplementing them with wild bird meat. The eggs would have been so tempting, fresh protein fried over an open flame in the fireplace, maybe scrambled or poached if the mood took him, so close yet just a little bit too far. It’s not unlike what he and Rodney have been doing, subsiding on hunted meat and supplementing it with any and all food supplies they’ve been able to salvage. The haul that they’ll get from Quonset is a blessing of Hail Mary proportions. 

It’s not until they’ve loaded the boxes into the rowboat and John looks back up at the house that he realises what he’s forgotten. He asks Rodney to put Miska into the boat while he heads back, sprinting up the steps back to the house, feeling himself a little winded with the effort and cursing the lack of opportunity to go running on a snow-covered island. Inside the house is even creepier without Rodney’s footsteps, and he goes upstairs quickly, sparing a glance at the bathroom door to make sure it’s tight shut against the bats. His objective is in the first bedroom, and he has to stand on the bed to reach, but in doing so he has to stoop so that his head doesn’t bang of the ceiling. He detaches the curtains hook by hook, sneezing a little at the amount of dust that comes off, but Rodney has a great big, padded stick for beating rugs clean that will no doubt work on these layered, heavy curtains. They’re old, in a dark floral brocade, not to his taste in the slightest but he favours function over form and these are impenetrable to light. Rodney is going to be so thrilled: one of the bedroom windows is in prime position for the early morning light (never-ending at this time of year) and recently he's had trouble sleeping through despite the burlap sacks covering the glass, is always tired and grumpy in the morning from a night spent tossing and turning. Sure enough, when Rodney sees John’s prize his eyes light up in glee, and it warms something in John’s cold body to see that look in Rodney’s face. 

Miska’s restless as John rows back to Quonset, she scuttles from one side of the boat to the other, twists and turns, never sitting still in one place. The water is choppier now, the calm flat of the morning disturbed by a breeze, rocking the boat up and down, and side to side. Rodney’s holding on for dear life, his eyes closed and his mouth muttering the basic tenets of the fundamental concepts of physics, something he does when he’s so  stressed he can’t function properly (but never in a real crisis – in times of genuine struggle he’s always on game). John rows strong and steady, willing the shore closer with each pull of the oar if only to alleviate the tension in the two beings he loves beyond all reason. It’s unsettling to see them so out of sorts, but it’s not long before they come up alongside the pier in Quonset’s harbour and they disembark with the boxes. Rodney had thought ahead and insisted that they bring their sleds to the pier so it’s only a quick stack and drag before they’re at the train and can store their haul safely under a table in one of the cabins. 

“Think it will all be safe here?” asks Rodney. 

“From what?” asks John. 

“I don’t know. Bears?” 

“Pretty sure they can’t get into the train, buddy. But if it helps, we can keep the doors closed when we’re not loading things up.” 

It’s still early, so John takes Rodney to the house of pasta. The rock is still on the mailbox, though totally unnecessary because John remembers exactly where it is, and when he opens up the  door they all tumble in. Rodney’s not as hyped about the pasta sauce as John had expected – “There’s no ingredients label, there could be anything in there.” – and John has to agree that the risk is too high to take when it comes to Rodney’s wellbeing. Nevertheless, there’s so much pasta that they have to take two trips, even with two sleds, and there’s enough canned tomato to drown a very large whale, so it’s still an absolute win. Rodney boxes up an absolutely astonishing number of tubs of dried herbs and spices, including several hundred grams of whole nutmeg, and he regales John with his aunt’s Bolognese sauce recipe, which is “ninety-five percent authentic, with finely chopped meat instead of ground and the addition of milk and nutmeg and absolutely no herbs or canned tomato. It’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted and the only reason it’s not a hundred percent authentic is the lack of pork.” John’s mouth waters at the very thought, but they’ll have to make do with good, old-fashioned, inauthentic Bolognese with venison and the heathen additions of tomato, oregano and basil. It’s a shame they can’t grow onions and celery and carrots in the frozen ground, but they’ll make do with what they’ve got, just as they have since they crashed. 

Between the two of them, they make quick work of the rest of the street, emptying all the homes before dinner time. As well as an entire carriage-worth of non-perishable foods they find more socks than they’ll be able to wear through in several lifetimes, a few boxes of bullets for the rifle, genuine dogfood by the crateful, and several fur-lined  ushankas that they both laugh at but tuck away in a box to wear in the exceptionally cold winter. Ear-coverings in minus forty degrees is the difference between a comfortable trip outside and a major earache. Neither of them is all that tired, so John takes Rodney back to the larger houses on the shoreline; multi-storied with wrap-around porches and neat little fences poking up in the snow. The first has a basketball hoop drilled into the side, and John can only assume that means whoever lived here had their driveway regularly swept because there’s no way you could play basketball in the snow. That’d be asking for disaster. He wonders which of the residents they paid to do it – John’s aware of several universal truths in life, and one thing he learned at a young age is that the rich never do their own home maintenance. His whole life, from his privileged childhood (in multiple houses all across the US) to the streets of both Baghdad and Bagram he’s seen that truth in action; rich people employing the poor for a pittance to do anything and everything that might chip a nail or ache a back. The houses on the street aren’t impoverished, poverty this far north is an absolute death sentence due to the harsh weather, but neither are they extravagant or frivolous like these two houses. 

John stops dead when they walk in, the familiar tick-tock of a grandfather clock halting him mid-step and sending his mind back to his youth; the clock under the stairs ticking all night long, audible even from his room on the far side of the house because it was so darn loud. It became a comfort in his childhood, warning away the monsters that plague a child’s mind in the dark, and then an excruciating reminder of everything he’d lost when his mother died and it was silenced, never to be swung again. It’s not exactly the same, this sound, it’s deeper and quieter, but it’s one of those things that instantly brings up memories long buried deep; of his mother sitting on his bed and telling him a story about dragons and knights and princesses in towers, his lamp dimmed to encourage slumber, his mother’s voice following him into his dreams and keeping his skinned knees from hurting all that much. It’s bittersweet to be inundated with these thoughts, overwhelming and a confusing mix of happy/sad that he can’t quite shake off. He realises that Rodney hasn’t said anything at all and turns to face him, meets his understanding eyes after such a long pause in which the whole house stood still. 

“We could take it back,” says Rodney. “It’s miraculous to find a working clock after everything that’s happened.” 

“It’s big and bulky and-” 

“We have a train. And seriously, it’s been bugging me that we can’t tell the time anymore.” 

“It’s also noisy as hell.” 

“Sure, sure. But it’s useful. Modern man is a slave to time.” 

“Don’t you think it’s been freeing? Doing what we want, when we want.” 

“Of course it has, but it’s also been a bit..." 

“Uncivilised?” 

Rodney clicks his fingers. “Yes, exactly. Uncivilised.” 

John muses over it for a while. “We have space...” he says. 

“It could go next to the stairs,” says Rodney. 

“Won’t it keep you awake?” 

“Light keeps me awake, but I spent longer than most people in university dorms, I’m immune to noise.” 

“Okay, let’s...okay.” 

They haven’t even searched the rest of the house, but Rodney notes the time (“1845, I would have guessed after eight...”) and makes an immediate start on the clock, disassembling it and wrapping the pendulum, weights and parts in luxuriously soft fabric pillowcases that John pulls from an airing cupboard in the hallway. He packs them back into the case of the clock, and between them they lift it up and carry it all the way back to the train, on foot so as to avoid any risk of unfixable damage. They tuck it tightly onto one of the benches in the second carriage then head back to the house. It’s big and cluttered, large rooms packed with  _ stuff; _ a library of really old books, most of which are in various languages neither of them speaks, a sitting room with cushioned loveseats and a daybed so garish it makes John’s eyes water. There are some good quality towels in the airing cupboard that Rodney swipes, pure cotton and old and worn enough to have proven their longevity multiple times over. There’s some food worth taking, and a bunker of coal that they haul between them to the train. Most of the clothing in the house isn’t suitable to the climate of the island and Rodney makes some noise about seasonal travellers wintering in the Caribbean – “Bloody bourgeoisie and their leisure trips, some of us dedicated our lives to the betterment of mankind while you lot were topping up your tan in Aruba.” John laughs because it’s such a  _ Rodney _ thing to say, and he wonders, not for the first time, what Rodney would have made of his father if they had met in the context of their relationship and not just as an employee. Patrick Sheppard was a hard worker, his life was all about his company, but Rodney would no doubt have dismissed it as meaningless and criticised him twenty ways on one breath while drinking his very expensive brandy. John tends to think more kindly of his father these days, but he has no doubt that he would be rooting for Rodney in any argument that followed. 

They finish up in the house then move onto the next one, similar in outdoor appearance but the complete antithesis on the inside. While the house before was a lesson in old-world values, complete with a painting of the family patriarch above the fireplace, this one is an exercise in contemporary minimalism, free of clutter and full of long, clean lines. The most useful thing they find is a set of Sheffield steel knives, still sharp, and a traditional whetstone to work the blades. If there was ever anything else suited to life in a cold, harsh climate it’s been taken with the residents when they evacuated. John wonders where they are now, if they made it somewhere warm or got stuck in Newfoundland with the riffraff. John secretly hopes that they have to earn their food like everyone else. He doesn’t share that thought with Rodney, but the way Rodney has been looking at him while they’ve been raiding these houses speaks to an innate knowledge of the working of John’s mind and an absolute unity on that topic. 

“I’d say we’re done here,” says Rodney. 

“Yeah,” says John. 

“I thought there would be more stuff.” 

“Me too.” 

They head outside to where Miska is chasing her tail. She stops and looks up at them, waiting for a command or a direction. John calls her to heals and the three of them head back to the garage, sleds in tow, hungry and a little tired. 

“We never did find a doctor’s office,” says Rodney, in a voice that’s trying desperately to be casual. 

“No, we didn’t.” 

“Looks like we’re on our own, medically speaking.” 

“Mmmhmm.” 

There’s a pause in which John can only hear their footsteps and Miska’s panting. Then- “I think we should start deconstructing your freakouts.” 

“Deconstructing? Is that a medical term?” 

“It’s a scientific term.” 

John huffs. “I’m not a machine, Rodney.” 

“I know that. But the human mind isn’t without its own rules and boundaries, and if we break the problem down, maybe we can pull you back together again. Like...like a jigsaw with its pieces in the wrong place. You have to pull the piece out before you place it where it’s supposed to go.” 

“That’s...surprisingly astute.” 

“I  _ am _ a genius.” 

“I’m not saying yes.” 

“But you are saying maybe?” 

“Yeah. I’m saying maybe. We can talk about it when we get home, alright?” 

“Sure, sure. Sounds good to me. So dinner?” 

*** 

The sun is still low in the sky when they both wake up, the light filtering through the window timid and anaemic. John packs up their bedding while Rodney starts on the contents of the garage. There’s a lot of decent foodstuffs, a broad range of canned, dried and non-perishables just waiting to be stuffed into boxes and transported to the train. There are only two carriages, and the compartments of the first are already jam-packed with everything they think they can use, now or in the future. Every single bar of soap, bottle of laundry detergent and tube of toothpaste has been packed up and stored, no bottle of shampoo or pack of razors left behind. They’re stocking up for the long haul, and there’s every chance this is a one-time opportunity; who knows if the train would even work a second time, and where would it go if it did? The tracks start at the Hibernia Processing plant, and it’s a mystery just where they could end up because the tunnel that passes through the cliff-face in the south of Mystery Lake has caved in. They’ve thoroughly decimated Quonset and there’s absolutely nothing left that they would need to come back for. They’re taking this for what it is – a blessing – and thanking their lucky stars that their pantry has expanded by precisely one train’s worth. 

It’s a couple of hours work, but they get the gas station emptied out and loaded onto the second carriage. Rodney ransacked the garage for tools and fuel, came away with several gas canisters of kerosene for their lanterns and every kind of tool hanging from the wall display plus infinite replacements. If anyone ever comes knocking looking to borrow a wrench or a hammer or a crowbar, they’ll be able to gift it to them, dressed up in a bow made of the sateen ribbon that Rodney packed from the gift-wrap display when he thought John wasn’t looking. (John’s looking forward to seeing what he decides to do with it.) Between them they liberated the rotating wire shelves of their English language books; some Dan Brown, some Stephen King and a surprising number of contemporary bodice rippers with ruggedly handsome men and buxom women on the covers. Rodney snorts at the images but neither of them suggests leaving them behind; at this point, they’ll read anything at all. 

And suddenly it’s time. Time to get the train moving, time to set off for home. Rodney’s already got the firebox lit, there are whispers of steam flittering out the chimney, nothing to be done but close up and set off. John takes one last look out towards the island in the middle of the bay, remembering the man on the ledge, thankful that it’s not either of them. They survived the crash and everything since, with any luck they’ll make it to old age, the two of them, together. He’s half a dream, more of a fantasy really, that somehow someone will come looking for them and take them back to civilisation, but if this island is to be their final resting place? Well, he’s made his peace with that. He’ll hold on to Rodney and Miska for as long as he can, keep them both safe and warm and fed. He knows he only has Miska for a short time, that’s the deal you make when you love a dog, but he’ll do his best to make it the greatest years of her life. 

Rodney smiles at him from up on the train, Miska standing at his feet expectantly, and John hauls himself up the steps and into the cab. He watches Rodney set her in motion, the chuff of the steam above them and the clackety-clack of the wheels beneath speeding up as he adjusts their velocity to something that will get them home in time for dinner but not slip them off the rails. It’s hot in the cab, something they anticipated and discussed at length. Would it be suitable for Miska to be in the cab? Should they put her in the carriage instead? But the thought of splitting up for the journey unsettled them both and they voted unanimously for her to stay with them. She doesn’t seem to mind, she’s standing on her hind legs, her front paws on the windowsill and her head poking out the window. She’s watching the scenery pass her by, as the train tracks diverge from the main road, trees and bushes rushing past despite the relatively slow speed of the train, crossing over frozen streams and empty fields, in between mounds of snow and ice. 

*** 

They stop at the signal box, Rodney pulling on the breaks a little too early in his caution so they have to walk a short distance to make sure the track is set the right way before they carry on. It takes some toing and froing; despite the fact that Rodney is a certified engineering genius, he can’t quite visualise how the turnout should be configured so that the Quonset track eases onto the single line rather than the Cinder Hills Coal Mine track. When he’s satisfied, John hands him a couple of boxes of the compressed fuel bricks to carry back to the train and grabs the rest himself, noting that when it comes to hard labour he still takes the lion’s share himself, giving Rodney the easier task or load. That’s probably unfair; Rodney has proven to be an asset when it comes to the physicality of their situation, never shirking his fair turn with the axe or saw, even if he does grumble about the hardship sometimes. John really needs to start treating him like an equal and not some civilian that’s never done a day’s graft in his life. Rodney has adapted to their situation like a chameleon, and while John’s lessons will never erase his more cerebral personality, nor would he want them to, Rodney's become just as tough and physical as he is. In fact, it’s a testament to Rodney’s massive intellect that he has adapted so well, and that they have survived so long in such adversity. 

“Why are you dawdling?!” yells Rodney from a few dozen meters up ahead. 

“I’m not!” shouts John. “My stack is heavier than yours!” 

John can see Rodney’s shoulders straighten as he turns and heads back towards him, stomping through the snow until they’re face to face. 

“Give me another box,” says Rodney, and John nudges his top box onto Rodney’s stack, evening out the load between them. They head back to the train. “I don’t know why you insist on suffering all the time. I’m perfectly capable of doing more and don’t think I haven’t noticed that you treat me like a girl sometimes. Just cause I like it when you fuck me doesn’t mean that-” 

“It’s not a girl thing,” snaps John. “Are you kidding me? Some of the toughest people I ever served with were women. Hard as nails. And while we’re on the topic of fucking, maybe you could think about doing me at some point?” 

When John looks over, Rodney doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“What?” he asks. “What’s wrong?” 

“I’m just worried,” says Rodney. 

“About?” 

“About you equating me with  _ him. _ I don’t want you to go through anything that might-” 

“Jesus, Rodney. It’s not...I could never get confused about who you are.” 

“I know that, but you’ve been through an ordeal and I just don’t want to traumatise you or-” 

“You won’t. It’s not like that. It’s not the same. Not even a little bit.” 

Rodney doesn't answer that, and John knows better than to push. Whatever top is spinning in his mind he’ll talk about it when he’s good and ready. They push the boxes up into the corridor of one of the carriages then hop back up into the cab where Miska is waiting patiently. Rodney can’t help himself, he always has to greet her physically and John watches as he bends down to rub and scratch her all over. When Rodney’s done, he sets the train in motion again, and John feels all that power, all that potential energy shift into kinetic, and it chugs as it crosses through the turnout and into the tunnel. Rodney keeps his eyes front and centre, gaze fixed on the light at the end of the tunnel, and John just stands behind him with Miska, content to let Rodney’s expertise get them home. 

“There was a thing,” says Rodney, finally, when they exit the tunnel. “A girlfriend. It’s not my story to tell and I won’t break that kind of confidence, but she had a thing, and she thought she was okay, and it turned out that she wasn’t and she freaked out and I freaked out and it ended what was looking to be a really good relationship. My first real relationship.” 

“I’m not going to freak out,” says John. 

“You might.” 

“Okay, it’s in the realms of possibility that I  _ could _ freak out.” 

Rodney looks over at him. “Exactly.” 

“So what if I do? 

“What?” 

“It doesn't matter. It’s not going to end us. Look, with your girlfriend, you were both young and probably ill-equipped to handle an issue of that magnitude. But putting aside the fact that  _ nothing happened _ because  _ you killed him, _ even if I was to freak out, which I won’t, but if I did, we’ll still be fine. There’s too much water under the bridge for us not to be, and for two emotionally dysfunctional adult men we’ve got this communication thing down pretty good.” 

“So...so even if you-” 

“Freak out, yes, we’ll be fine. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Oh.” 

“So maybe you should man up and do me.” 

Finally,  _ finally _ , the corners of Rodney’s mouth curl up. “Maybe I will.” 

“Great. Can you focus on getting us home without derailing us now?” 

Rodney looks out the portholes in the front of the cab. “To be honest, whether we stay on the rails has almost nothing to do with me and everything to do, and god do I hate to say this, random chance. Back when the tracks were used routinely, the train would have kept the rails from icing over, but it’s been over a year now and who knows what kind of effects the climate has had. We are at the mercy of the elements here.” 

“It was always going to be a wild ride. Just how fast are we going, anyway?” 

“Uh...the dial says twenty miles an hour. Any slower and the fuel consumption will increase exponentially. It’s a little backwards like that.” 

“And if we come off the rails at twenty miles an hour?” 

“We’ll skid along the ground until we stop. Nothing dramatic I shouldn’t think unless we careen down a cliff. But look, there’s Carter Damn, and it’s all flat from here.” 

The damn comes into view, large and imposing on the right-hand side of the tracks. In front of it is a bridge spanning the river, and John has a moment of panic when the train rolls onto it that it’s going to crack under the pressure and collapse down onto the ice, but other than a little rusty screeching, nothing untoward happens and the train comes off the other side in a smooth motion. It chugs along the tracks, past the loading point for the logging camp and around a very long, gently curved bend, until it’s on the final straight leading to Mystery Lake. It starts to snow, but Rodney tells him that a few more flakes won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things, so he lets his gut unclench and tries to count out the miles. What neither of them takes into consideration is the effect the snow has on visibility, and the derailed train appears suddenly into view, a lot close than it should be. 

“Shit!” says Rodney, and he slams on the breaks but it’s far too late. The engine collides with the forward carriage of the other train with a loud crash, an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. There's an overwhelmingly loud screech as the stationary train is pushed along the tracks, wrenched from its own burned-out engine and half dragging along the ground, sparks flying from the rails where metal is forced across metal. Everything comes to a slow, shuddering stop in what feels like an eternity but is probably actually only a few seconds. Rodney, who had been holding onto Miska with one arm and the train with the other, looks at John and they both burst into adrenaline-fuelled laughter, collapsing down onto the floor of the cab in relief. Miska pants and pushes off of Rodney to bound over to John and check on him, and John gets a mouthful of fur as she headbutts the side of his neck. 

“Easy, girl, easy, we’re all okay.” 

There’s a long, low groan from the front engine, then an explosion of metal as the boiler bursts, hot steam and water cascading out of the gaping hole in the side. They all duck their heads to avoid the backflow, and jump down from the cab relatively unscathed, watching as the snow around the train melts as quick as a flash, revealing the dark earth underneath as the water spreads. 

“Oh, that’s all going to ice over,” moans Rodney as he watches the damage unfold. “It’ll be all slippery when we come to empty out the carriages.” 

“We can mark out the ice before we leave, put down some branches or something.” 

“This is a disaster.” 

“It is,” admits John. 

“What are we going to do?” 

“Thank our lucky stars that we got home in one piece,” says John, waving a hand to encompass the three of them. “First things first, let’s grab our packs and whatever we want for dinner and head home to light the stoves. We can worry about taking in the shopping tomorrow.” 

Rodney heads to the back of the train to get their packs. “Grab those curtains, would you?” he says. 

“Yes, dear,” says John as he opens up the door to the first carriage. 

“And some ramen. Oh! And some of that canned pie filling!” 

“Your wish is my command!” shouts John as he hauls himself up onto the train. 

“Oh, very funny,” comes Rodney's muffled voice. “You should take that act on the road.”

John hums to himself as he stuffs a bag full of food. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

**Author's Note:**

> CW for them stumbling over a dead body in later chapters and some discussions about what happened to John in part 1 and what he did in part 4. Also they're looting houses (as respectfully as they can, but it's still looting).


End file.
